I may well not receive advise form this forum but I am not sure just where to seek assistance and hopefully some guidance concerning Registry Key names having ##?# can be provided here.
I am posting this query in this Forum as I have been a user of CCleaner for many many years and I am sure a solution can be forthcoming. Besides there doesn't seem to be too many web forums that carry this type of query that I am about to explain...
It seemed that the appearance within the registry of keys prefixed with ##?# coincided with the installation of Windows 10 ver 1511. I have a small network consisting of three former Windows 8.1 computers and all three have the same issue. The automatic conversion of key names came to my notice when I tried to perform a 'Find' search within Regedit.exe but the search never finished - it seemed to be in a continual loop. After waiting for quite some time with nothing seeming to be happening I cancelled the search but a prompt appeared indicating that Regedit.exe had stopped and was being restarted.
Other forums complain that Microsoft are responsible for the issue of Regedit.exe stopping and restarting but no one seems to acknowledge that registry key names have been modified.
The registry keys affected can be found under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\DeviceClasses. There would be 50 or more keys under DeviceClasses affected. There may well be other HKEY hives that have similar ##?# appendages.
With the prefix mentioned having been added to registry keys - is this an indication that the key is now obsolete or that it is corrupt? if the identified keys are obsolete is there a setting within CCleaner that could be made in order for CCleaner to remove the obsolete key entries during a system scan?. If the keys have become corrupt (somehow) is it possible to repair the entries by removing all #'s and ?'s.so that the entries return to become useful once more.are corrupt. Is there a worthy application that will associate the corrupt keys with internal components by returning the affected keys so that they too become useful.
I am sure that a forum member or even Piriform support have experienced the auto appending of ##?# to key names and have resolved the issue in some way.
Here's hoping that their experiences regarding the resolutions achieved will come flooding in response to this posting.
Kind regards
Kimbo