5 Ways to Fix Error While Deleting Key

Most advanced users know all about it, but if you didn’t know what the Windows registry is, it’s a several megabyte database that stores most of the information for your Windows operating system. It contains thousands of configuration settings for Windows itself, third party software, hardware and preferences for the individual users on the computer. Editing the Windows registry can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing because if you wrongly delete an important key, Windows might not be able to boot up the next time.

So no matter how confident and experienced you are, it’s always a sensible idea to be a little bit safer and make a backup of the registry keys that you intend to edit, or even better, make a complete backup of the whole registry as well just in case. If you’re trying to edit or delete keys from the registry to repair or recover from certain problems, you might find that some keys won’t let you do anything with them and you’ll get an error such as “Cannot delete xxxxx: Error while deleting key”. These keys are usually protected to stop accidental deletion and it’s important you have the correct key before trying to change it.

Error While Deleting Key

You could also be the administrator on the computer, but still can’t manipulate the required key, which might sound quite odd. Even though the administrator account has a great deal of control, there are other hidden accounts and levels on the system which have even greater access and therefore standard administrator privileges are not enough. To solve this problem, you have to force the registry to allow the logged on user full control of the subkeys. Below are several different ways of performing this operation to give you the required access.

1. Run Regedit using the RunAsSystem tool

As well as being able to take ownership of registry keys and setting the permissions manually, another thing you can do is run the Windows registry editor with highly elevated privileges. This can be achieved with the System account that is even more powerful than the administrator and therefore has more access to protected registry keys. This has the added bonus of allowing you to view the SAM and SECURITY registry keys which are otherwise hidden. A small portable tool called RunAsSystem is able to do this for any program you tell it to, here’s how.

1. Download RunAsSystem, extract and run it.

2. Click the Browse button and look for regedit.exe which is normally located in the Windows folder, or simply type regedit into the box.

RunAsSystem

3. Click OK which will open the Registry Editor. If you open up the Task Manager, and as you can see from the screenshot below, regedit.exe is now running under the SYSTEM account where it would normally run under the user’s standard account. You can delete several legacy keys without the “Error While Deleting Key” message.

Regedit as System

RunAsSystem is also useful if you want to restore any registry keys that were deleted this way because importing the keys would produce a “Cannot import file.reg: Error accessing the registry” message from the standard admin/user account. The solution is to either run regedit as System, and import it from File -> Import, or run the .reg file using RunAsSystem.


2. Use the PsExec tool

The PsExec command line utility is part of the PSTools remote administration set of command line utilities from Sysinternals. Like the RunAsSystem tool, PsExec also allows you to see the SAM and SECURITY keys that are hidden under normal circumstances. It works in a similar way too by elevating the registry editor to run under the System account granting more control over the registry. You need to make sure you have administrator privileges in the first place for this to work.

1. Download and extract the PSTools.zip file from the Sysinternals website. Right click on the PsExec utility and click Create Shortcut (or Send to -> Desktop).

2. Right click on the shortcut -> Properties and add the following to the end of the line in the Target box:

{space}-i -d -s c:\windows\regedit.exe

regedit with psexec

3. Click OK and then double click the shortcut to launch Regedit under the System account. If you’re still unable to delete or edit the keys you want, try the next solution below.


3. Registrar Registry Manager

Registrar is a registry editing tool with several advanced features and is a lot more like a standard Windows Explorer interface with toolbar buttons for back, forward, cut, copy, paste etc. It also has advanced searching and comparing functions, bookmarking, a registry defragmenter and a backup and restore option. There are other features such as multi level undo and remote registry editing, but they along with several other features are only available in the Professional version which costs around $55.

Thankfully there is a free Home Edition that allows you to browse and edit the registry without any problems, the only downsides are the nag screen and not knowing some functions aren’t in the free version until you click on them. Like the tools above it also shows the usually hidden SAM and SECURITY keys, and while testing it was able to edit or delete a number of the registry keys that the tools above couldn’t. Keys you would normally have to edit the permissions manually to delete such as those that need removing to repair the Features window problem in Windows Vista or 7 are done so with the click of a button.

Registrar Registry Manager

Usage is pretty much the same as regedit and you simply navigate your way to the required key and then right click on it or use the buttons in the toolbar to rename or delete etc. If manually editing registry permissions sounds to confusing, this might be your best option. Registrar can also be made portable by copying its folder from Program Files, and works on Windows XP up to Windows 8.

Download Registrar Registry Manager Home

If even these tools aren’t working for you, the next option will be to edit the permissions for the key manually using Regedit or simply use a low-level anti-rootkit tool. On page 2 we’ll show you how.

100 Comments - Write a Comment

  1. Raymond 2 years ago
  2. KirkH420 3 years ago
  3. amir 4 years ago
  4. Ken 5 years ago
  5. DrMoisheP 5 years ago
  6. KanikaKanjari 5 years ago
  7. Michael 5 years ago
  8. prabhu 5 years ago
  9. Nummnutts 5 years ago
  10. DhiRu 6 years ago
  11. DhiRu 6 years ago
  12. Indra 6 years ago
  13. name 7 years ago
  14. Jean 7 years ago
  15. iKeddz 7 years ago
  16. chiudo 7 years ago
  17. Robbie 7 years ago
  18. Yerbol 7 years ago
  19. Deepak Verma 7 years ago
  20. MoltresRider 7 years ago
    • HAL9000 7 years ago
  21. Another nice one 7 years ago
  22. VINCY 8 years ago
  23. shahrooz 8 years ago
  24. Jon 8 years ago
  25. Highlander 8 years ago
  26. A 9 years ago
  27. Hakim 9 years ago
  28. Carlos 9 years ago
  29. Damien 9 years ago
  30. Vedaprakash 9 years ago
  31. Minami 9 years ago
  32. william campbell 9 years ago
  33. Anthony 9 years ago
  34. Matthew 9 years ago
  35. Yubaraj 9 years ago
  36. Marek 9 years ago
  37. Mr.Afridi 9 years ago
  38. Pete 9 years ago
  39. Scott 9 years ago
  40. Galahad 10 years ago
  41. Masonic_Knight_Templar 10 years ago
  42. Thanks 10 years ago
  43. Raja (India) 10 years ago
  44. Bruce 10 years ago
  45. [email protected] 10 years ago
  46. Mayura 10 years ago
  47. Anon 10 years ago
  48. Tom 10 years ago
  49. Sammy 10 years ago
  50. RunAsTheMAN 10 years ago
  51. lemon 10 years ago
  52. cad 10 years ago
  53. Joan 10 years ago
  54. Nico 10 years ago
  55. Fakhri Aunurrahim 10 years ago
  56. rajiv 11 years ago
  57. Aditya 11 years ago
  58. Taaniel 11 years ago
  59. J M Ward 11 years ago
  60. Nestor 11 years ago
  61. Jawher Bel Mabrouk 11 years ago
  62. Joe Isaac 11 years ago
  63. amer 11 years ago
  64. prasenjit 11 years ago
  65. Henk Boonstra 11 years ago
  66. Pierre Lariviere 12 years ago
  67. godslave 12 years ago
  68. Pradeep KR 12 years ago
  69. Dan 12 years ago
  70. Roberto 12 years ago
  71. Ali Asadullah 12 years ago
  72. Dc 12 years ago
  73. Gus 12 years ago
  74. Denyzor 12 years ago
  75. Someone 13 years ago
  76. James Frimpong 13 years ago
  77. kalyan 13 years ago
  78. Merlin_Magii 13 years ago
  79. Johan 13 years ago
  80. Shaer Alvy 13 years ago
  81. PRB238 14 years ago
  82. Pie 14 years ago
  83. Mikkel 14 years ago
  84. Vijay 14 years ago
  85. Greg 14 years ago
  86. kash 15 years ago
  87. Dazza 15 years ago
  88. David Bradley 16 years ago
  89. ahashmi06 16 years ago
  90. Heath 16 years ago
  91. Azfar 16 years ago
  92. Merlin_Magii 16 years ago
  93. ferdi 16 years ago
  94. braco 16 years ago
  95. Jeff 16 years ago
  96. Roy Raay 16 years ago
  97. mamed 16 years ago
  98. Rekhyt 16 years ago
  99. mazani 16 years ago

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Note: Your comment is subject to approval. Read our Terms of Use. If you are seeking additional information on this article, please contact us directly.