Unable to remove Registry redundant entries

Many moons ago I used windows Virtual PC when upgrading from XP. Time passes and items get deleted and now I find that my registry cleaner detects about 20 useless entries all relating to VirtualBox. It cannot delete these entries and I tried manually and also failed .They all are owned by SYSTEM and I cannot set this to a new owner. The permissions for System and for Administrator are for READ and Full Control (they are both greyed out). I tried a clever little program called RegOwnershipEx (winaero.com) which I hoped would solve the problem but it too failed. Anyone know of a solution to this annoyance?

Which Registry cleaner are you using? Have you tried it in Safe Mode? Are there any remnants of VirtualPC left on the HDD? One could try manually deleting entries in the Registry but always have to keep in mind the Registry has 5 parts and items will be present in 2 or more of those parts, they are text files called Hives.

Thank you Berton,
I haven't tried Safe Mode ,but surely the ownership is the snag?I use RegSupreme which has never failed me before. Searched HDD for VirtualBox and no results.

OLDJACK said:

Many moons ago I used windows Virtual PC when upgrading from XP. Time passes and items get deleted and now I find that my registry cleaner detects about 20 useless entries all relating to VirtualBox. It cannot delete these entries and I tried manually and also failed .They all are owned by SYSTEM and I cannot set this to a new owner. The permissions for System and for Administrator are for READ and Full Control (they are both greyed out). I tried a clever little program called RegOwnershipEx (winaero.com) which I hoped would solve the problem but it too failed. Anyone know of a solution to this annoyance?

By used "Windows Virtual PC" do you mean you installed the software? If so, have you since then removed it and are now trying to eliminate the registry entries?

Thank yo both,
If I remember correctly it was a Windows Virtual Pc program which used VirtualBox. It is no longer on my laptop but I still have VirtualBox remnants in the Registry which are an annoyance rather than a problem. I'll take a look at WinPE.

Thank you Carwiz, I've just tried CCleaner, it did find more rubbish in my registry BUT it did not locate the 20 VirtualBox entries.

Thanks everyone ,the solution was as suggested, start in Safe mode and I was able to change the Owner and thus delete.