As you may have found out, the Add/Remove Programs functionality of Windows sometimes yields dead entries. These entries can be the result of corrupt installs or accidentally deleted files.

While there are lots of programs out there which can clean these entries up for you, you can always delete them manually in the registry. You can can find all the Add/Remove Program entries here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Uninstall

Here you will see there is a key (folder) for each entry in the list. All you have to do is delete the key and it will disappear from the list. Of course, be careful doing this because you don’t want to delete active entries.

When you install certain programs, you may notice that new options are available in your right-click menu on certain files. These options are controlled through Windows Shell Extensions, which are simply registry entries. While some programs give you the ability to control these entries for their respective application, a utility which allows you to modify them as a whole is ShellExView.

The ShellExView utility displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension.

This free utility can be useful when you want a quick way to turn on or off some of these entries, especially if the respective program does not provide a way to do this.

Typically, prefaced before anything which requires you to make a change to your Windows Registry, you see a warning which basically says “be careful because if you do something wrong you can mess up your system”. This is absolutely true.

Whenever you make a change to your registry, you should create a backup first. You can do a full registry backup by using System Restore, but in most cases a simple key backup is good enough. This is done easily inside of RegEdit:

1. Select the key (folder) where you are making changes in the registry from the left side.
2. Select File > Export.
3. In the dialog, just enter a file name which is descriptive of the key you are exporting. You can also confirm the location is correct at the bottom of the dialog (Selected Branch).
4. Confirm the REG file saved correctly.

That’s it. Now if you need to undo your change you can simply import the file you just created. This is a simple and effective way to help recover simple mistakes if you are dealing with the registry.

Of couse, this method is not 100% fool-proof. For example, if you modify a system value and reboot your system, this method may not be an ample recovery model. However, for minor system tweaks it should be sufficient.

There are utilities like the freeware CCleaner software that can easily let you list and modify auto-run programs from the Windows XP system registry like this:

Above: In CCleaner, click Tools (large icon on left) then Startup (white button in middle column) to see this list.

However if you’re the type that would rather do this the "old fashioned way", you can get to this information and get the same editing ability by using the tried-and-true registry editor.

You can get to the registry editor in one of two ways.

1. Click Start / Run / type regedit / click OK.
2. Right click on a blank area of the desktop, click New from the context menu that appears, click Shortcut, type regedit in the dialog box that appears (no need to click Browse), click Next, click Finish. This will place a regedit icon on your desktop that you can double-click to launch the Registry Editor.

Inside the registry editor you have to expand some folders – in a specific order – to get to the "run" list.

The order is as follows:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
• SOFTWARE
• Microsoft
• Windows
• CurrentVersion
• Run

It should look something like this when you’re done:

From here you have the same modify/delete ability as you do with CCleaner, except using the built-in registry editor instead.

IMPORANT NOTE: Messing around with the Windows registry can seriously screw up your Windows installation if done wrong.

It is highly suggested to BACKUP your registry first. This is done easily via the registry editor by simply clicking File then Export. Do this before making any registry changes. Make sure when exporting your "Export Range" is ticked as "All".

Like this (see bottom left):

Didn’t find what you were looking for in Run?

Maybe it’s not there. Maybe it’s in the Start menu’s "Startup" folder instead.

Click Start, All Programs, Startup and check that menu. You can remove any menu entry there by simply right-clicking on it and left-clicking Delete.

If you delete something on a goof, don’t worry because it’s in the Recycle Bin where you can put it back in case you make a mistake.

Just remember there is no Recycle Bin ability with the registry editor. Your only means of restoring something you deleted is by importing a .reg file you exported as explained above.

Whenever you defrag your hard drive (using the tool which ships with Windows), you might notice there is a big green block which not movable. For the most part this green block is your Windows page file. Typically the way to make sure this gets defragged is to simply “delete it” by (steps abbreviated) removing the page file, defragging the hard drive and then re-setup the page file. Instead of this workaround, defrag the page file directly by using Sysinternals PageDefrag tool.

This free tool does just what you think, defrags your page file:

PageDefrag uses advanced techniques to provide you what commercial defragmenters cannot: the ability for you to see how fragmented your paging files and Registry hives are, and to defragment them. In addition, it defragments event log files and Windows 2000/XP hibernation files (where system memory is saved when you hibernate a laptop).

This tool is ideal to run on a fairly regular basis to prevent your virtual memory and registry information from becoming too jumbled.