Registry

Don't!

While it may appear that "Just delete that line" will not cause any problem, it opens a whole world of hurt.

Believe me, I thought "I don't play this game any more, I can delete all occurrences of it".....the words screaming in my head at the time were "NO, don't do it"

Oh boy I should have listened. A reinstall later and all is now well, I don't know what I deleted that would have caused the computer to go doolally, but after much swearing and having to get a friend to resolve the problems I am now at peace with the world. I love my computer...now!

Ccleaner is a good utility that I use --> http://www.ccleaner.com/

The short answer is to run REGEDIT. But the Registry was NOT designed for user friendliness. There are too many things that can be easily messed up if you don't know exactly what you are doing.

I know plenty of very knowledgeable people who won't touch the Registry except as a last resort.

Hi, Nessa,
I know plenty of very knowledgeable people who do use the Registry, to manually clean it; and some who learn by first-hand experience, which is the best teacher. You never know what you can accomplish until you try.

WARNING! If you Edit the Registry, your computer might not re-start. You are on your own, and if anything happens, will have to figure out how to solve it!
Here are steps and suggestions to answer your question, which you asked very simply.
Before using Registry Editing, always shut down your computer. Then, turn it back on. This saves a good copy of the Registry. If you make a mistake in the Registry, you can change it back to the "Last Known Good Configuration" as follows in this link:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...307852&sd=tech
Get familiar with finding this selection before you go into the Registry.

First, go to Start/Run and type in REGEDIT, click on OK.
Now that you are in the Registry, don't make any changes just yet. Move around some and get use to seeing it.
Left click on the + sign, to the left of the first heading. This expands the listing.
Keep scrolling down on the left hand side, looking at all the Folder names, to get an idea of just how much is in the Registry! Keep this up for as long as you like.
Then, when through looking, Click on File, Exit, at the top.

Now, if you want to Delete any values from the Registry, go back to the Registry as above. WARNING; If you delete the wrong things, your computer might not reboot!
You can search for entries, for example RUN. All programs that start up when you boot up the computer are listed under "Run", Run Services", etc. These are the entries listed under Start/Run, then MSCONFIG.
So, when in the Registry, click on Edit, then Find.
In the space, type in what you want to find, such as RUN, then at the bottom of that window, left click (put a checkmark by) "Match whole string only". This will stop your searching from stopping at every single sentence with the name "Run" in it.
Click on the Find Next button.
It will stop searching at the first Run word it finds. Left click on the Folder, Run, and look to the right at the values in that folder.
When finished here, press the F3 key on top of the keypad, to continue searching.
When finished in the Registry, click on File, Exit, at the top.
This searching can be used when one uses the Add/Remove Programs, to uninstall a program. Windows does not uninstall all of the Registry values, leaving behind many of them. So, deleting them manually will clear out what the uninstall program did not do.
When searching, type in something related to what you uninstalled, such as SpyBot, or whatever relates to the program.

I do wish you the best, and again, be careful. Other answers given so far have also given you Warnings! Good luck.

I used a utiltiy called Easy Cleaner.
http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm

It has a few useful features, and doesn't break things when it runs.

I have found that there are a number of registry cleaners out there that are just too aggressive in what they try to delete.... And they break things I don't want broken for the sake of a "slim" registry.

As an IT professional, I have dealt with a lot of people who make their living supporting computers. Manually editing the Registry is considered a last resort.

The good piece of advice Fred gave was to reboot first. You might want to check out this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/en-us

About backing up the Registry.

Hi,
If you will check out the link I gave about keeping a copy of the current, good Registry, it explains what to do, and how to recover it. Best wishes.

Nessa,

The real short answer to your questions is you don't.. Only the developer of the application knows the specifics of the registry. The registry is the computers brain. Unless you are very knowledgeable of the registry and its settings, think of cleaning (deleting) your registry equal to performing a lobotomy - without training.

The real question is why - not how.

P2E

HI,
Why manually clean the Registry?
When one uses the Add/Remove Programs, under Control Panel, Windows does not clean out everything associated with the program.
It sometimes leaves the following; which "clutter up" the harddrive:
1. Folder in Windows Explorer
2. Program names under Start/Programs
3. Dll files in System and other places.
4. Registry values, not deleted, associated with the program.
5. Any shortcut icons placed on the desktop, or in desktop folders.

Seaching the Registry for items associated with an uninstalled program, then deleting those values, and Folders, are a learning process with a computer, keeping the Registry and the computer, running more smoothly.
All the above are answers to "Why".