Removing Protected Registry Keys

Found this somewhere, it works. Once in a while this may come in handy, as uninstalls tend to leave these keys, so posting it here. —————————————————————————————– Those LEGACY_ keys are protected. How to remove LEGACY keys You must use REGEDT32 and not REGEDIT for this proceedure These entries cannot be simply deleted. You will get the error that delete access is denied. To get delete access for this key you must: 1. Hi-lite the key and select the Security\Permissions… menu option. 2. Turn on "Replace Permission on Existing Subkeys". 3. Hi-lite the group "Everyone". 4. Set the type of access to "Full Control". 5. Click on the OK button. 6. Wait 20 seconds for the change in the registry to take effect. 7. Now with the key still hi-lited, press the delete key and the key will be deleted. See http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=23949&hl= for a help given. Note that these keys don't do any harm, just bloat your registry.

To delete multiple keys without having to perform this action on each key, perform steps 1-5 on the parent key, delete the keys you want removed, then set the permission back to what it was on the parent.

hmm. can this be written as a batch file, or a script? mutter, seems *possible* innit? who'se smart with code..

Ver-r-r-y Interesting! Is this version-specific, or will it work with all recent Windows versions? I currently have 98SE, Me and XPHome running on various machines in my family, and I'd like to be able to use it if possible (but if I mess up my son's or daughter's machines, they'll have my head on a plate. ) I'm a bit chicken to experiment.

Here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?…kb;EN-US;141377 … the differences between regedit and regedt32 are explained. Amongst other it says: "In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Regedt32.exe is a small program that just runs Regedit.exe." … so it seems strange that it'll work with Regedt32 and not Regedit. So I tried using both. I did not notice any difference (using XP) - both were working.

Old post of mine on another forum: >Does it matter if I use regedit or regedit32? (In XP) One letter too many (regedt32) remember old DOS 8.3 dies a hard death. LOL Both work in XP…regedt32 stubs over to regedit when invoked. W2k was the oddball with two functions for each command. Cheers, Texruss (giving up for tonight…have 15 IE windows open and NAV just scanned 250,000 files on my laptop and came up clean…so it's time for a little shuteye!)