Ken,

your message states "Please reply to the newsgroup," but i am new to this
place and not sure how to do that. i can see only one option regarding
replies.

i was under the impression that windows had to read the registry while
loading, and that a longer registry would take longer to read. so, i figured
removing any irrelevant entries would expedite the process. is this not
true? thanks.

john

"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote:

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:39:06 -0700, jw72253
wrote:

when i run regedit, i can see that there are still several references in the
registry to some programs that i have long since uninstalled. specifically,
i can see these under HKEY_CURRENT-USER/Software/. For example, there is a
folder there for Nero, which i have long since trashed, as well as a few
others.


Such is a very common occurrence. However, note that these leftover
registry entries take up a tiny amount of disk space, and don't hurt
you in any way.


although i have run a couple of registry editors,


Bad move. Registry cleaning programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of
the registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone
and don't use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think,
and what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of,
having unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.

If you haven't been burned by the registry editors you've run,
consider yourself lucky.



which appeared to
clean something or another in the registry, these references persist. is
there any reason i cannot just open the registry editor, highlight the
folder, and delete it? if i know the program is gone, what would be the
harm? thanks.


*If* you do it with care, and don't accidentally delete something that
is needed, you are correct that there will be no harm. On the other
hand, there is also no benefit.

Given that there is no benefit to doing what you propose, and that
there is *always* a risk of error, I think it's a bad bargain. I'm
sure I have many such leftover entries in my own registry, but I just
leave them alone.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup