Newbie question about registries/files

Okay, this is a stupid, idiotic, newbie question, it just hasn't been answered in the tutorials & I couldn't find it with search. Please don't flame me.

Okay, how do you make entries into the registry, and make text files in directories other than the one the program is in?

Okay, how do you make entries into the registry
this should be asked in the windows forum (it's not C++ specific, it's windows specific)... but the API calls you're looking for are RegCreateKeyEx(), RegDeleteKeyEx(), RegDeleteValue(), RegQueryValueEx(), RegQueryInfoKey(), RegOpenKey() and RegCloseKey() etc. look into MSDN for registry functions.

and make text files in directories other than the one the program is in
use the full path name for the file name when you open it.

ie, instead of:
FILE* fp = fopen("myfile.txt", "w");
do this (assuming windows/DOS)
FILE* fp = fopen("C:\\whatever\\dir\\you\\want\\myfile.txt", "w");