How to Clean Registry key Of A Program (With Registry backup)

Clean Registry key Of A Program (With Registry backup)

This guide explains to perform registry key cleaning along with doing the backup.

Registry Key cleaning is important when you are dealing with any virus. It is an important procedure that is only recommended for advanced users. If somehow you have installed any unwanted program like Adware, you need to remove the registries entries created by the program after uninstalling it from control panel.

For Safety removing unwanted registry keys and boost the system performance, you should run Registry Tuner by System Mechanics. This tool is designed to scan the unwanted registry entries along with risky ones and helps analyzing other performance related issues. (See steps at the end of the blog.)

 

 

Like any other legitimate programs, Adware or malicious programs too creates registries and its sub keys to uninterruptedly perform its functions and run within the system background.

Also, it gives various permissions to itself through adding new entries to the windows registry editor. So, if the registries created by them are not been removed completely, then the malicious program can regenerate itself by the leftover keys.

But before manually altering the registries, it is very important to take a backup of the all the registries, so if anything goes wrong, it can be restored from backup.

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How to create Registry Backup

Again there are many ways to make a backup of registries. Follow the simplest one to create a backup of registries for the different versions of Windows: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10.

1. Press “Window key+ R”.
2. Type “regedit” and press “Enter”.
3. Click “Yes”, if you are prompted by User Account Control
4. On the left menu, click on “Computer” to select all the registries.
5. Now on the top menu click on “File”, then click “Export”;
6. It will open the “Export Registry File” window, where you need to type a name for your backup which will be saved with the “.reg” extension.
7. Then you need to choose “All” under the “Export range” section and Select a location to save your backup;
8. Click “Save”.

After you have created a backup of your registries, you need to delete the registries created by the suspicious program that is no longer exists in the control panel.

Caution: Deleting registry is a crucial step, you should only attempt this step if you are sure about the program name you are going to delete. As if anything goes wrong or you accidentally delete registry of any other program then you may encounter any system related issues.

Now, follow the steps to delete Registry of the Adware/suspicious program.

Method 1: To Delete/Clean Registry Keys of a program Manually

1. Press “Window key+ R”.
2. Type “regedit” and press “Enter”.
3. Click “Yes”, if you are prompted by User Account Control
4. On the left menu, click on “Computer” to select all the registries.
5. Expand the left menu “Computer”.
6. Find the key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall”
   (copy this key and paste it in the address bar). Or navigate to
   Computer→ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → Software→ Microsoft→ Windows→ CurrentVersion→ Uninstall;
7. Here you can see a list of all the programs on your computer, find the suspicious program.
8. Select the program from the list and right click on the program will open a menu.
9. Click on “Delete”.
10. It will ask for your confirmation, click on the “Yes” to confirm.
11. Repeat the process with all the suspicious program/Adware.

Method 2: You can also find a specific registry key.

1. Go to “Edit” from the top menu.
2. Go to “Find”.
3. Type the program name.
4. Press “F3” to search.
5. The search result will show all the registry files related to the program name. Check if the found item is correct.
6. Select the program name and right click on it then choose to delete to remove it.
7. Continue to press “F3” to delete all the items related to the program till all the links are gone.

Once you have deleted all the suspicious program, then close the registry editor window. And open the control panel to check if the program has completely gone.

Note: If you think you have deleted the registry of some other program or wrongly performed any step then don’t panic, you can easily restore your registries from backup.

To Restore Registries from backup

1. Press “Window key+ R”.
2. Type “regedit” and press “Enter”.
3. Click “Yes”, if you are prompted by User Account Control
4. Go to the “File” menu and click “Import”;
5. “Import Registry File” window will appear, browse the location of your backup file with .reg extension;
6. Select the file and click Open;
7. When prompted to “you would like to merge the contents” Click on “Yes”.

Now, you should again perform the above steps to remove the undesired program from your computer.

Method 2: Scan And Fix Registry Issues With System Mechanics

1. Click to install the System Mechanics Tool;
2. Follow the on-screen instruction to install the program;
3. Once the program launches, dashboard click on the “Toolbox” ;
   

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4. Choose “Clean” and then select “Registry Cleanup”;
5. Now, click on “Analyze Now”, and wait for few seconds, till the analyzing completes;
   

   Clean Registry key Of A Program 2

6. It will list all the registry related issues found on the system. Click on the “Clean Selected”;
   

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7. Wait for the tool to fix the registry issues.
   

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