One of the gotchas of the Reg­Notify­Change­Key­Value function is that the notification registration has thread affinity. This is a problem if you want the notification registration to outlive the thread that generated it. In particular, if you register the notification from a nonpersistent thread pool thread, you get into an infinite loop:

1. Thread pool task calls Reg­Notify­Change­Key­Value, and waits for the associated event via Register­Wait­For­Single­Object.
2. Thread pool thread goes idle.
3. Thread pool destroys the idle thread.
4. Due to thread affinity, this signals the handle.
5. The thread pool queues a task to process the handle that was signaled.
6. The task checks the registry key (observes that nothing changed) and calls Reg­Notify­Change­Key­Value again.
7. Repeat.

Windows 8 added a new flag to the Reg­Notify­Change­Key­Value function: REG_NOTIFY_THREAD_AGNOSTIC. If you pass this flag, then the notification registration does not have thread affinity. If the thread that called Reg­Notify­Change­Key­Value exits, the notification registration remains active.