WinXP Registry & Non-Existant Programs

[Kubie]

My brother has an older Dell laptop and over the years has used various versions of AVG, Zone Alarm, printers, etc.
I was helping him clean up all the residual files using Ccleaner, and Add/Remove Programs.

He wanted to look in the registry just from curiosity and entry after entry of programs he no longer has. He wanted to start deleting right then and there. I told him not to touch a thing or he could be doing a recovery.
Our question is why are they still there? How does one remove them? There are so many that I would think it would cause some slow down of the laptop.
Ccleaner didn't even touch them.

TIA
Carl

[EzyStvy]

Removing a few hundred entries out of the few million that are there doesn't make much difference.

It'd probably helpful if you gave a few exact/specific examples of the location of the entries in question.

[Kubie]

Hi Ezy.
All of the entries are in HKEY>Local Machine>Software.

[glc]

If CCleaner isn't touching them, leave them alone. They aren't hurting anything and you might destabilize it if you do start removing them.

[Kubie]

Thanks glc.
I'll tell him to keep out of the registry.

Carl