Scripting the deletion of registry keys and values

One of my colleagues (who wishes to remain anonymous) gave me a great tip this morning – how to delete registry keys and values using a .REG file.

To delete a value, set its contents to – in the .REG file, e.g.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\MyKey]
"MyValue"=-

Or to delete a key, add a – sign after the leading [ in the .REG file, e.g. [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\MyKey]

Apparently this works on all version of Windows from Windows 2000 onwards, although I’ve only tried it with Windows XP Professional.