Something a lot of people aren't aware of is that the majority of the problems in the registry are often found in HKey Current User and not HKey Local Machine. So recreating your local profile (or just renaming the ntuser.dat file and copying over the one from Default User), will get you back to a relatively clean slate. Of course, this needs to be done while logged on with a different user account, or in safe mode.

So, @ Teacher49:
- reboot
- log on as a different user (sometimes this doesn't work and you have to do it in safe mode)
- go to c:\documents and settings (c:\users if you're on Vista), open your profile directory
- rename the ntuser.dat file (make sure hidden/system files are visible) to OLDntuser.dat
- copy the ntuser.dat file over from c:\documents and settings\default user
- log back on with your account
- try to duplicate the problems you had

If the problems are fixed, great. You can always retrieve any information from your old registry hive if need be, since it's still there, but it's not likely you'll need to.

If they return, you can just reverse the process (delete the new ntuser.dat file you copied, rename OLDntuser.dat back to ntuser.dat...logged on with a different account or in safe mode of course), log back on, and everything will be like it was before.

This is much cleaner and safer than allowing some 3rd party application hack through your registry.