Have you come across a situation where uninstalling a software leaves back its Service or Driver references in the registry, and Windows tries to load them at every boot and fails? Here is how to remove an orphaned or unwanted service or driver from your system.
Method 1: Using the SC.EXE command

The SC command-line tool in Windows XP/Vista which can be used to create, edit or delete Services. To delete a service, use the following command-line syntax from a Command Prompt window:
SC DELETE <service_name>

Where <service_name> tag represents the short name of a service, and not its display name. For example, the short name for Automatic Updates service is wuauserv, but its display name is Automatic Updates.) To determine the short name of a service, you use the Services MMC console. For more information, see article How to find the short names of services.

Important: If you’re using Windows Vista, you need to open an elevated Command Prompt to run SC.exe command-line tool.
Method 2: Using the Registry Editor

To manually remove a service from the registry, use these steps:

Start Regedit.exe and navigate to the following branch:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services

The Service and driver entries are present under the above registry key. Each sub-key represents a driver or a Service. You should be able to identify them easily by looking at the DisplayName and ImagePath values in the right-pane in the Registry Editor.

Note: Before modifying / removing a Service, create a System Restore point and/or