Several years ago I installed a database program for genealogical purposes. After evaluation it was removed with its uninstall program. Unfortunately it left remnants in the registry which cannot be deleted by Power Tools, Registry Mechanic, or manual deletion in the registry.

The reported fault shown is its missing EXE program; -- I no longer have this, so a reinstall/Uninstall is not possible. After deletion, all searches report successful deletion, but on reboot -- they are all back again.

How can I remove these elements completely?

Hello there Cynic and welcome to PCHF,

The best thing to do would be to boot your computer into safemode and run regedit and manually remove it from there.

Make sure you check the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run section and delete anything to do with that program.

I would also browse to the c:\program files directory and delete any directories it may have left behind

Close, but no goldfish. The original exe file is nowhere in the registry. My thoughts are that the registry is repairing itself from an unknown fault and in doing so is replacing these files from an earlier copy of the registry. ?

If you know the name of the file, try searching your hard drive for it. It may be in a another directory and windows could be loading it on startup, this would cause it to re-add itself to the registry.

If you find the file then delete it.

As stated in my original posting, the EXE application was removed with its uninstall program. I'm confident following text searches with Mechanic, Power Tools, and Regedit that it is not lurking anywhere on the hard disk. This program is NOT one of those that cannot be deleted from the registry.