Registry Analyzer provides a quick and dirty way to analyze file and path references in the system registry. Usually, after a couple of installations/deinstallation of different software products, the registry becomes full of nagging file
references pointing to where one day the files were, but not any more.
There are many of professional products that offer different ways of cleaning up the system registry, but I did not really care to get one for permanent use.
Also, Delphi programmers often get confused about usage of TRegistry class.  This project not only demonstrates different operations with that class, but also can be a handy tool when you decide to do a little cleanup in the registry.

Installation

Simply unzip the contents of the archive into a new directory and run regtool.exe.
Full source code is included in the archive. I created it using Delphi 3, but it also should be fully compatible with Delphi 2 and Delphi 4.

Word of warning

Removing entries from the system registry may be quite dangerous. Before you start playing with this tool, please make a reserve copy of the registry file. This way you will always have a chance to 'rollback' your changes.
Be extremely cautious when removing entries, some of them may look like file references, but they can actually mean something else. Registry Analyzer does its best to make sure a string value is a file or path reference, but I would recommend to verify every reported problem using the Registry Editor. Also, sometimes it would be better to delete not only the string value but the whole key, for example when a program that needed this value is gone from your computer.
 

Information for advanced users

Registry analyzer performs scanning of the following keys only:
 
 

Root Key	Sub-path
HKEY_CURRENT_USER	\
HKEY_USERS	\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE	\Software\

 

Users guide (well, sort of)

Run the program, press the 'Start Registry Processing' button.
When the analyzing is complete, all 'hanging' file references will be displayed in the grid. You may select references to be removed (use Ctrl-LeftClick and Shift-LeftClick to select more than one entry) and then press the 'Remove Selected References' button.
Selected entries will be removed from the registry and Registry Analyzer will re-scan the registry file.

This software is freeware and might be used in any other free software (thus excludes shareware), whithout any guarantee or responsibility of the author.
I would like to receive some kind of feedback from you on what you think about Registry Analyzer and what new feature you would like to see in new versions, or what feature you are going to add.