Weird one: Registry entries won't stay deleted/modified

[Paul Woolley]

Hi all,

Got a bit of a weird one:

I noticed some redundant entries in my registry in the ol' startup area
(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run), so I
decided to clean up and delete them. However, when I delete one and hit
F5 to refresh the view, it comes right back!

The entries refuse to be deleted and their values revert back too if I
try and change them.

I've tried Regedt32, third-party Reg Cleaners, Startup Managers, reboots
and many combinations/permutations of, but they're having none of it.

Just for sh*t's and giggles I've run chkdsk and scf and all that sort of
stuff too to make sure I've not got some spurious error somewhere, but
nothing makes a diff.

Anyone got a clue as to what's going on here and how I fix this pesky
problem?

Many thanks,
Paul.

 

[Drew Tognola]

Paul,



If I didn't know better I'd say it's spyware but you do want this to run on
your computer, right? Did you clean your computer of spyware & viruses?



Drew

 

[Drew Tognola]

Paul,

Something else occurred to me. Are you using Microsoft Antispyware's
Real-time Protection by any chance? If so, maybe at an earlier time you
'accepted' a change that was caught by Microsoft Antispyware and checked
'Remember this action'. So when you delete the Run command, Microsoft
Antispyware will see the change but may not ask you if you want to make the
change because you had checked 'Remember this action'. So it returns the Run
command. Long shot I know.

Drew

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi all,

Got a bit of a weird one:

I noticed some redundant entries in my registry in the ol' startup area
(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run), so I
decided to clean up and delete them. However, when I delete one and hit
F5 to refresh the view, it comes right back!

The entries refuse to be deleted and their values revert back too if I
try and change them.

I've tried Regedt32, third-party Reg Cleaners, Startup Managers, reboots
and many combinations/permutations of, but they're having none of it.

Just for sh*t's and giggles I've run chkdsk and scf and all that sort of
stuff too to make sure I've not got some spurious error somewhere, but
nothing makes a diff.

Anyone got a clue as to what's going on here and how I fix this pesky
problem?

Many thanks,
Paul.

What exactly is the problem value?

 

[Paul Woolley]

AHA!!!!!!!!!!!

Drew, your long shot has scored more of a deflection than a direct hit!

I'm not running MS Antispyware, but you got me thinking about what otehr
software, with bad intentions or good intentions, might be keeping an
eye on that particular, vunerable part of the registry and preventing
any chances from being made there.

I am running Lavasoft's Ad-Watch, so I disabled that and hey presto, the
deleted, redundant entries stay gone!

Phew! That one was doing my nut in! ;-)

Many, many thanks Drew,

Paul

 

[Paul Woolley]

Hi Pegasus,

Thanks for your interest, but I got it sorted out. See my reply to Drew
Tognola to see what happened.

Cheers,
Paul.