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J333rd wrote earlier:

Sometimes. In the case of settings that are Explorer related, and not connected to a background task, the registry settings are read at the beginning of a new instance of Explorer.

One could make a registry edit in the Explorer realm, then use Task Manager to close Explorer, and then open a new instance (rather than reboot or whatever). This is clearest for Internet Explorer, where a change is often only reflected whan all existing instances of IE are closed and a new instance made. Service entries almost universally require a stop and restart of the Service. Some are oddly mixed; an example is the TCP/IP stack where some portions of the registry are dynamic and others static in the sense that only a reboot or the use of Netsh.exe would reflect changes.

There usually is some trick or other to avoid having to do a reboot to have a registry change reflected immediately; you tend to learn these tricks the longer your computer bootup time becomes!