I'm looking for registry software

[chriscb]

Hi, I've searched through the forums and am unable to find what I'm looking for, so if it's been posted please let me know where. Basically, what I'm looking for is a program that can determine which reg keys are affected by the executable.

What I'd like to be able to do is click on an executable file and have the software I'm looking for tell me which registry keys are associated with the executable program I click on. Likewise, I'd also like the software to be able to scan the registry and let me know, via some type of report, which reg keys are just sitting out there with no .EXE file associated with them. There have been several times when I have uninstalled software from Add/Remove Programs and it didn't remove all the registry entries. I've already tried the following apps and they don't give me the information I'm looking for:
Paraben's Registry Analyzer
Registrar Registry Manager
Registry Analyst 1.2

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Mak213]

I dont think what you are looking for exists. Since you want something to show you which entries are ties to which applicaiton you run at that time. I have not seen a app like that in my 15 years of PC use.

[forrestcupp]

You'll just have to do it the hard way. When you uninstall something, edit the registry yourself by running regedit. Make sure you do a backup of your registry first and set a system restore point. Then go through and do a search for whatever you uninstalled and delete all entries. Keep searching and deleting until there is nothing left that has to do with what you uninstalled. I recently had to do this myself because of a couple of things that didn't uninstall correctly in Vista.

Make sure you don't accidentally delete an entry that is for something else or you will probably be screwed.

If you're not comfortable doing that, then just don't worry about it and leave it on there.

[chriscb]

Originally Posted by Makaveli213

I dont think what you are looking for exists. Since you want something to show you which entries are ties to which applicaiton you run at that time. I have not seen a app like that in my 15 years of PC use.

Thanks for the response. Basically I'm looking for a program similar to Dependency Walker. Dependency Walker (depends.exe) Home Page

Problem with DW is that it doesn't show the reg keys that are associated with the application.

[chriscb]

Originally Posted by forrestcupp

You'll just have to do it the hard way. When you uninstall something, edit the registry yourself by running regedit. Make sure you do a backup of your registry first and set a system restore point. Then go through and do a search for whatever you uninstalled and delete all entries. Keep searching and deleting until there is nothing left that has to do with what you uninstalled. I recently had to do this myself because of a couple of things that didn't uninstall correctly in Vista.

Make sure you don't accidentally delete an entry that is for something else or you will probably be screwed.

If you're not comfortable doing that, then just don't worry about it and leave it on there.

I use Win XP Pro SP2, if that matters. I normally make a backup of my registry before installing new software, but when working on someone else's computer, I find most people don't do this and therefore when I go in to clean things up a bit I don't always know which reg keys are ok to delete and which ones I should leave the heck alone.

[Mak213]

Again i state what i previously said. There is no application out there like this. So either A.) you use DW or B.) use CCleaner to clean up the registry on any machine that is not your. CCLeaner is a fine application to use on a PC that is not your to keep the registry in tact.

[forrestcupp]

Originally Posted by chriscb

I use Win XP Pro SP2, if that matters. I normally make a backup of my registry before installing new software, but when working on someone else's computer, I find most people don't do this and therefore when I go in to clean things up a bit I don't always know which reg keys are ok to delete and which ones I should leave the heck alone.

regedit works the same in XP as it does in Vista. The only real reason to delete the registry keys that are still there from previous uninstalled programs is if you want to be able to reinstall the software with a clean slate of settings (or if you're paranoid that someone will find out something meaningless about you). Those keys aren't what slows your computer down. What slows your computer down is when your system somehow gets jacked up with conflicts in the registry. Just like Mak said, CCleaner is a great program to take care of those kinds of conflicts.

But for example, if you uninstalled Crysis demo and you want to remove it all from the registry, just do a search for crysis. You can pretty much bet that any entry that says crysis is safe to remove unless you have another program with a similar name installed.

[tariqadkhan]

Yeah i use crap cleaner. if you know what you're doing then use regedit

[ECTech]

You should take a look at Process Monitor its part of the Sysinternals Suite which was bought by Microsoft.

Download:

|MG| Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities 14\08

Microsoft page:

Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources

And a great uninstaller that will get some but not all of associated files and reg entries would be Revo Uninstaller. It also helps in removing items that have lost log files and so forth.

Download: |MG| Revo Uninstaller 1.42

As for a good registry cleaner, i used to use Registry Mechanic by Pctools. Then I found CleanMyPc, which does a much better job all around.

[chriscb]

I really appreciate all the responses. I think I may have found what I was looking for. RegMon for Windows v7.04