Antivirus suggests unnecessary registry keys for deletion

[rundwald]

Examples of the entries are in the attachment. The "preapproved" within the registry entries concerns me in case they relate to Windows 10, which at this time I do not wish to install, but may wish to later. If I removed the entries now, would I lose the free upgrade.

Are the entries relating to what I think? Remove or not? Opinions please!

 

[UsernameIssues]

Those "PreApproved" keys have to do with ActiveX in Internet Explorer:
Controlling ActiveX in Internet Explorer - IEInternals - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

What antivirus app is suggesting that these keys are unnecessary?

 

[rundwald]

Avast Free 2015: Scan> Scan for performance issues.

 

[UsernameIssues]

There are very few extra (unneeded) things in the registry that can hurt performance. Any keys that are not needed (not accessed by an app) are probably not going to hurt performance. The extra key would have to be very large for you to notice a performance issue.


Here is the problem with software like this:

You can scan your computer with product A and it finds 5 things "wrong"...
...but you leave those 5 things alone as a test.

You can scan your computer with product B and it finds 38 things "wrong"...
...then product B must be more thorough. Product B must be better. Wrong!

Products A and/or B could be wrong about some or all items that that were declared as wrong. Products A and/or B could be snake oil apps.

The registry keys that you show in your screenshot exists in a fresh install of W7 with SP1 and IE8. I really do not see how they could cause "performance issues". According to the article that I linked to, those keys were introduced with IE7. There is a chance that IE9, IE10 or IE11 no longer use those keys - but my guess is, they are still of value.


If you want, you can export that entire "PreApproved" key and then let AVAST clear what it wants from it. If things don't work as expected, restore (merge) that key back in.

 

[rundwald]

Thanks. I'll mull over it all. BTW Avast also reported "\ValidationTaskDeadline" under Scheduled Tasks.

 

[UsernameIssues]

I'm not sure why it would report ValidationTaskDeadline. Happy researching

 

[Jacee]

Here's what these two Clsid's are:

{02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B}
SystemLookup - Global Search=

{166B1BCA-3F9C-11CF-8075-444553540000}
SystemLookup - 166B1BCA-3F9C-11CF-8075-444553540000

 

[rundwald]

All very odd, that Avast is reporting so, I'm beginning to think. I've never seen such things picked up by previous AVs over the years. I'm beginning to think, whether somehow I have a rogue copy. I should have stayed with AVG maybe, despite their new data policy?

 

[Jacee]

You might have 'adware' that came in, bundled with the programs. Let's see what AdwCleaner picks up.


Please download AdwCleaner by Xplode and save to your Desktop.

Step 1.

• Double click on AdwCleaner.exe to run the tool.
  Vista/Windows 7/8 users right-click and select Run As Administrator.
• Click on the Scan button.
• AdwCleaner will begin...be patient as the scan may take some time to complete.
• After the scan has finished, click on the Report button...a logfile (AdwCleaner[R#].txt) will open in Notepad for review (where the largest value of # represents the most recent report).
• The contents of the log file may be confusing. Unless you see a program name that you know should not be removed, don't worry about it. If you see an entry you want to keep, let me know about it.
• Copy and paste the contents of that logfile in your next reply.
• A copy of all logfiles are saved in the C:\AdwCleaner folder which was created when running the tool.

Step 2.
Using AdwCleaner: Scan & Clean:
This time click on the Clean button.
Press OK when asked to close all programs and follow the onscreen prompts.
Press OK again to allow AdwCleaner to restart the computer and complete the removal process.
After rebooting, a logfile report (AdwCleaner[S#].txt) will open automatically (where the largest value of # represents the most recent report).
Copy and paste the contents of that logfile in your next reply.
A copy of that logfile will also be saved in the C:\AdwCleaner folder

******Post both .txt logs