Edit Registry: Any principles?

[IrishJim]

I'm about to edit my registry (actually one on Win98 and one on WinMe).

In looking over past threads, FAQ's, etc., I saw the following: "Obviously, the moral of the story is 'Thou shalt not mess around with your registry unless thou doth knowest what thou art doing'". Obviously wise words.

I want my PC's to forget they've ever heard of Symantec and Norton, before I load the new virus software.

When I search for keywords and find them (either in a key or a data element, or wherever), are there any good rules-of-thumb about when to delete a value, when to delete a key or folder, or whatever?

I'd love to hear your feedback! Thanks.

 

[BradSQLGuy]

lesson I could If you don't know what you're doing first do a back up then start playing around. That is the best advice I can give. -Knowing is half the battle-

 

[edfair]

Have a working boot disk and have a good backup of both files so you can restore them.
In general, if the key contains only specific stuff for one program, I delete the key, if not I delete the data. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Mulga]

Like Ed says...
BACK UP!!
The two files he is referring to that make up the registry are system.dat and user.dat All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[JonathanB]

I like this

http://asia.cnet.com/downloads/pc/swinfo/0,39000587,39008379s,00.htm

Registry Saver Pro. It saved me a lot of times when I started learning to hack my registry. I like it better than ScanReg because it saved Registry EVERY bootup. And farther back.

 

[paulovey]

If you have already uninstalled norton and symantec, a great little util to catch most of the orphaned entries is regclean. You download it from microsoft or I can email it to you.

Paul

 

[IrishJim]

Thanks for your help! I'll make copies of the system.dat and user.dat before I start. And check my boot disk.
I wasn't looking for a tool, but that Regclean sounds good. It's not compatible with the newer operating systems, so Microsoft took it off their site.
However, one thing led to another, and I found the following article, which has just what I was looking for, complete with printscreens of what I see in my registry, and pointers for removing software references before re-loading!

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...chnet/prodtechnol/win98/maintain/registry.asp

To give him credit, it's by a guy named Brien M. Posey.
I'll probably get into it over the weekend.
Thanks again.
IrishJim

 

[wolluf]

Or regcleaner at

http://www.jv16.org/

(better than regclean)

 

[Jestr1]

Why go through all of this - If you just uninstall it from your Programs menu or Add/Remove it from Control Panel, it will remove itself from your hard drive AND your registry. There's a snowball chance in hell that you're going to understand all of the additions that Norton made to your registry!