Regedit Alternative

[Barryng]

Infrequently it is necessary to manually search through the registry in an effort to fully remove every trace of some piece of software. Sometimes, if there is a problem, the uninstall program dialog does not do a thorough job making a reinstall unsuccessful. There are other reasons too but using Regedit for this purpose works but is very laborious and time consuming.

Is there an alternate program available for Regedit that would make cleaning all registry entries containing a specific key word or phrase easier? I am thinking of something that would compile a list of every entry meeting the search criteria then allowing me to verify if it should be deleted by either just checking or unchecking a box.

 

[knoober]

I looked for the link where I read this info at but couldn't find it easily, but the gist is this: Windows actively discourages the kind of tool you are looking for to the point that they bought out a company that was close to releasing a tool for navigating the registry. Now keep in mind that this is third hand info from a few years ago when I was reading about registry cleaners, so YMMV. I actually do hope that someone posts up a cool utility for digging through the Reg, but I do not think there is one out there.

 

[habbajabba]

WSSC's NirSoft utility RegScanner is what you want. I was going through the exact same problem the other day with Epson's 3 installable softwares for my scanner and I finally switched to regscanner and saved like all day worth of click delete enter ad nauseum. I just need the drivers. The gui and the photoscan stuff is useless to me when I use NAPS2 as the frontend.
http://www.kls-soft.com/wscc/
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/regscanner.html (towards bottom of page)

 

[Alaric]

Revo Uninstaller https://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html It does all that for you and doesn't bork your registry.

 

[c627627]

Not free and not really for what you need it for, but I have been using this one for many years now to copy/paste registry locations:
http://www.torchsoft.com/en/rw_information.html

 

[Alaric]

A good uninstaller does what the OP is looking for in a fraction of the time. Run it and reboot after, and you're good to go 99.9% of the time.

 

[trents]

Revo Uninstaller https://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html It does all that for you and doesn't bork your registry.

Yes, I was going to suggest this as well. Also keep in mind that some software companies offer cleaning utilities that do a more thorough job than doing a routine uninstall with Control Panel>Programs and Features. AMD and Nvidia do for video card drivers and the major anti virus companies also do.

Finally, I would add that Ccleaner has a built-in registry clean tool that will clean up orphaned registry entries and it prompts you to save a backup of the registry if you want and even creates the backup file for you.

 

[c627627]

Just to clarify, as far as I know the only actual measurable reason to do this would be to remove old name registration information left behind by the program's own uninstaller, and they do that, and this is a legitimate privacy concern.
But other than that... If anyone can post any other reason to do this, I'd be curious to know...

On this topic, and as a topic of interesting discussion, sometimes programs blacklist registration information.
They include blacklisted registration detection, and that way, if you trigger detection by entering blacklisted registration info, even if you uninstall the program, you cannot reinstall it, even with valid information.
I am guessing "traces" of program have been left behind, I always wanted to do a test for fun to see which one of your programs would actually remove those traces, because I have a program for which I know my own valid registration, which I use, and this program I know deploys this technique if anyone uses blacklisted info they get off of the internet. You cannot thereafter enter even valid information to use it, unless you nuke Windows first.

 

[Alaric]

I've had problems with CCleaner's registry cleaner, even after undoing it with the built in tool. CCleaner will dig up a bunch of entries to "clean", but I would stick with the ones you know are invalid. Just letting it run rampant through the registry isn't a great idea.

Example: I see quite a few "unused file extensions" in this scan that most assuredly aren't unused. Honestly, with an SSD search times are so short a good uninstaller will do all most people will ever need.

 

[c627627]

Yes, absolutely do not allow *any* program to "clean" your registry settings if you don't understand what they are.
There is no blanket registry cleaner. It's like using 'snake oil' in the 18th century.

But if you need to remove traces of an uninstalled program, then that is a legitimate task.

 

[Alaric]

Yup, but that's the only real need. It won't help performance no matter what the makers of the software tell you. If you're OCD about your rig, do some cable management, don't start spring cleaning your registry. LOL

 

[habbajabba]

Whatever. The amount of stuff my one little epson scanner installed in the reg was over 2000 items for 3 small exe's. RegScanner was all I needed. An uninstaller, I generally use geek, only gets the basics. Not all of it. Plus some installers are 'cleaner' to begin with and when you go to uninstall with something like Revo it works well. Epson not so much.
Seriously if you're afraid to look at the reg and or delete something you just need more practice. It has been many years since I actually had to reinstall the OS because of a manually deleted registry item. Rule is if you really have no idea what the key does, and it's say locked, probably try not to delete. Even with the unlocked keys you can still mess things up. Aint ms grand? And that my friends is why a good backup with recovery disc is the best piece of kit on the machine.
I also defragment the reg once every blue moon.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Regseeker used to be the hot ticket in the XP days. Have no idea if it works on any newer OS.
I use Revouninstaller.

 

[Alaric]

Whatever. The amount of stuff my one little epson scanner installed in the reg was over 2000 items for 3 small exe's. RegScanner was all I needed. An uninstaller, I generally use geek, only gets the basics. Not all of it. Plus some installers are 'cleaner' to begin with and when you go to uninstall with something like Revo it works well. Epson not so much.
Seriously if you're afraid to look at the reg and or delete something you just need more practice. It has been many years since I actually had to reinstall the OS because of a manually deleted registry item. Rule is if you really have no idea what the key does, and it's say locked, probably try not to delete. Even with the unlocked keys you can still mess things up. Aint ms grand? And that my friends is why a good backup with recovery disc is the best piece of kit on the machine.
I also defragment the reg once every blue moon.

Yeah, but it takes a while to get to that point. I wasted many hours of my life reinstalling XP on a P4 rig with 512 Kb of RAM on a 5400 RPM spinny drive. Quad cores, multiple GBs of RAM, SSDs, all let me ignore the hell out of my registry and I have to say I like it better this way.