Often programs are deleted or uninstalled and they leave behind entries in the Software section of the registry.  These entries can be detected by looking for keys with filenames in them that do not exist.

When you press the Find Suspect Keys button, it will search through the many software sections of the registry and find any filenames whose files do not exist on your harddrive.  This may or may not mean that that entry is bad. 

Please take care when removing entries in this section. 

 

 

When the search is finished, all of the suspect keys are listed in a listbox.  The listbox has two columns: Key Branch and Suspect Keys.  We suggest that you first look down the Key Branch column and see if any of them are programs which you have uninstalled.  If so, select it, click on the "More Options" button, and click on the "Delete Key Branch" button (see instructions below).

There are two buttons under the listbox.  The first button will remove all of the suspect keys.  We do not recommend using this unless you know that all of the suspect keys should be removed.

The second button is the "More Options" button.  In order to use the "More Options" button, you must first select an item from the listbox.  A window will be opened with many options in it.  Please see the section below for more information.

It is better to use the "More Options" button on each listbox item than to use the "Remove All Suspect Keys Listed Above" button.

 

 

Clicking the "More Options" button opens a dialog box which shows the key and provides several options of what to do.

The key is actually divided in three parts.  The first part is in red and is the general location in the registry.  The second part is in purple and is the Key Branch.  The Key Branch should be the name of a software company or program that is or has been on your computer.  The third part is in blue and is the name of the actual key that is a bad link.

The Options available are:

Add to Stash List - if it seems that the key is a list of filenames, History list, or MRU (Most Recently Used) list and you want to clean it from the registry, you can add it to the Stash list by clicking on this button.  The Add to Stash List dialog will open up.

Remove Suspect Key Only - if it seems that the key is a list of filenames, History list, or MRU (Most Recently Used) list but you do not want to add it to the Stash list, you can delete the suspect key or skip it.

Delete Key Branch - if it seems that the Key Branch is a program that you have uninstalled, you can use this button to remove it.  The Key Branch will be deleted and all of its subkeys.  So if the Key Branch is "SuperWin" and the Key is "\WinRescue\98\directory=C:\winrescue98\", the SuperWin key and all of its subkeys will be removed.  This would not be good if you had other programs from SuperWin listed under this key that you were still using or if you were using a different version of WinRescue, for example, NT, that was also a subkey of WinRescue.  In this case, you should click on the next button, Open RegEdit and only remove the 98 key and all of its subkeys.  So please be careful with this.

Open RegEdit - this will open RegEdit and show the key.  You can then see all of the subkeys that are involved and decide what to do with them.

Keys that you remove in RegEdit are not backed up before removing as in RegVac.  It is a good idea to use the Registry Backup part of RegVac to back up the registry before making any of these type of changes.

Always Skip Key - this will put the current key on a list and then always skip that key in the future.  The list is kept in the regvac.ini file under [SkippedFiles].

Always Skip Branch - this will put the current branch on a list and then always skip anything found in that branch in the future.  The list is kept in the regvac.ini file under [SkippedFiles].

Cancel - this will close the dialog.

 

The "Search the Software Section as part of Automated Scans" checkbox lets you include the Software Vac in the automated scans.