This doesn't work at all and just deletes the value you've selected. Here's how I found to do it. Run

reg add <name of key> /t <whatever type> /d "a value" /ve

at the command prompt.

This will overwrite the current default value with the data specified ("a value"). You can then use regedit.exe to change the value to whatever you like by just double-clicking it.

The good thing about this method is that it allows you to change the type of the default value, which is usually REG_SZ and which cannot be changed from Regedit (from what I can see).

This doesn't work at all and just deletes the value you've selected. Here's how I found to do it. Run

reg add <name of key> /t <whatever type> /d "a value" /ve

at the command prompt.

This will overwrite the current default value with the data specified ("a value"). You can then use regedit.exe to change the value to whatever you like by just double-clicking it.

The good thing about this method is that it allows you to change the type of the default value, which is usually REG_SZ and which cannot be changed from Regedit (from what I can see).

The way I got it to work was
1) create a new string value
2) give it a name
3) then select the string value
4) in the properties window delete the (Name) field
5) the string value name automatically goes to default.

I figured I would do a quick and dirty installer with a VS 2008 deployment project. I used the Registry Editor to create some keys, importing an exported set. There were keys that had no values. The vdproj built ok. The resulting installer installed without error. While trying to figure out why my application wasn't running, I checked the registry keys on the target machine with regedit. An error message was displayed for the keys without a value.

I checked everything in the Registry Editor and it all looked good.

Eventually I manually added (Default) values (as explained above) and rebuilt the vdproj. After that the keys installed and read ok. This corrected the application problem as well.