Can Books Help Me Understand the Windows Registry?

[Tenshou]

I have a question I have been going through my registry and I found a few strange looking files and I am not exactly sure what I should do with them so please help D:

 

[jim mcnamara]

This is a poor man's algorithm for cleaning up a PC:

If you have a decent antivirus/anti-malware app, update the signatures, let it run a full scan. malwarebytes.org has a good free one.

Assuming your PC is now reasonably clean, check with regedit again. If you still see stuff you think should not be there run a registry cleaner. A decent one is free from piriform.com - ccleaner. Only run the registry cleaner. Windows 7 is better about not needing registry cleanup than (ugh)Vista or XP. If the file reference is still there, leave it. You can break installed apps by clobbering registry entries or deleting the file they reference. Again, assuming the app is still installed and is not malware.

If your PC is slow, and some websites do not load as expected, nasty BHO's are often the culprit. They usually are not seen as malware by anti-malware apps. At work users get the ASK toolbar (BHO) which breaks several of our required MS apps. We do a fresh OS install on bad ones. If you understand what you're doing in that area you can try a tool like HijackThis. You can also completely trash your OS install with this tool.

There is an awful lot to this - what I mentioned is a very shallow look. Don't really understand? get help.

 

[Tenshou]

Thanks, do you know any books which can teach me on how to work with the windows regedit, or is this done by trial and error?