How to: Delete a Registry Key in Visual Basic

Microsoft Developer Network

How to: Delete a Registry Key

Visual Basic Application Development

The DeleteSubKey and DeleteSubKey methods can be used to delete registry keys.

Procedure

To delete a registry key

Use the DeleteSubKey method to delete a registry key. This example deletes the key Software/TestApp in the CurrentUser hive. You can change this in the code to the appropriate string, or have it rely on user-supplied information.
Visual Basic
```
My.Computer.Registry.CurrentUser.DeleteSubKey _
    ("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TestApp")
```

This code example is also available as an IntelliSense code snippet. In the code snippet picker, it is located in Windows Operating System > Registry. For more information, see How to: Insert Snippets Into Your Code (Visual Basic).

Robust Programming

The DeleteSubKey method returns an empty string if the key/value pair does not exist.

The following conditions may cause an exception:

The name of the key is Nothing (ArgumentNullException).
The user does not have permissions to delete registry keys (SecurityException).
The key name exceeds the 255-character limit (ArgumentException).
The registry key is read-only (UnauthorizedAccessException).

Security

Registry calls fail if either sufficient run-time permissions are not granted (RegistryPermission) or if the user does not have the correct access (as determined by the ACLs) for creating or writing to settings. For example, a local application that has the code access security permission might not have operating system permission.

To delete a registry key

Tasks

Concepts

Reference