How to Remove Blank Entries from MSCONFIG.EXE

I have run into something interesting while fixing a Windows XP machine, when I went to msconfig.exe to check some startup options I found a bunch of startup items that were simply blank lines. I doubt they were causing any problems but it was weird and I wanted to get rid of them. There probably wasn't a problem with just leaving these items in the startup but I thought I would just remove them so it would be cleaner. It's a relatively easy thing to fix, a simple registry edit or two (depending on how many blank items you have) and you will have it fixed.

I am not sure what causes this problem in Windows XP and why these entries are blank; I couldn't even really tell what the items were to start with. They are probably old programs that have been removed from the PC via the Add/Remove programs and Windows XP simply just didn't remove the registry information and that is why the blank startup item is in the msconfig.exe. Like I said this most likely isn't a cause for alarm and probably isn't causing any performance issues, but I like to keep things as clean as possible so I went ahead and fixed this.

To get rid of blank startup items in your msconfig.exe follow these steps:

1 - Click Start
2 - Click Run
3 - Type msconfig.exe
4 - Hit Enter
5 - Click Startup Tab
6 - Look for items with blank name
7 - Take note of the Location (write it down)

Now follow these steps to remove the entries in the Registry

1 - Click Start
2 - Click Run
3 - Type Regedit
4 - Hit Enter
5 - Navigate to the first Key Location you wrote down
6 - Delete all keys that have a blank value
7 - Close the Registry
8 - Reboot your PC

Once the computer boots backup open the msconfig.exe again and verify that the blank startup items are now gone. They shouldn't show up any longer, if they are still there, make sure you follow the steps listed above again and verify that you did delete all blank keys. If you follow the steps again and the startup items still are in the msconfig.exe you might have a different problem, but in all the PC's I have come across that have had this issue the above steps always worked.