Even though that Daz forum post, which is for a similar yet unrelated bug, used regshot just as I did, I saw several registry keys in excess of 255 characters, using illegal symbols as well.  Right now those are my suspects - gonna try to figure out how to get rid of them and see if that does the trick, but somehow my hopes are not high.  Flagging external files is another possibility, I see several registry links in that log that show modifications to other files, not even certain I can undo that if that is the case.

I agree Analog-x64, this is exactly the type of behaviour a rootkit or virus exibits, and is unacceptable in my book as a "security" feature.  If they are that determined, they should maybe use a dongle, or make an uninstaller/cleaner as you said.  I could see this actuall making the software less secure.  For example, a computer user who is capable but not security minded goes to sell or trade his machine and believes simply uninstalling and deleting programs and files is safe and secure (I use this as I saw it all the time at the repair shop I worked at).  He leaves the OS on it and sells it, gives it away, what have you - but oops, embedded in the registry is his name and serial he paid for.  Someone using the computer decides to try Carrara, and installs it, and wham - they have a serial for a full version of Carrara pro with the ability to updates.  This may even cause conflicts with the actual owner, as if they embed this kind of data in the registry I would not doubt their online updater tracks machine and hardware IDs (kinda like microsoft does).

Problem here, is while I am definately more of a Power User, I am no programmer, so many of the registry keys are just gibberish to me.  Some I know from experience, others I can make educated guesses.  I really don't want to use a "registry Vacuum" to remove everything it identifies as an invalid key, as in the past false possitives had caused problems with other software, CoDecs, and liscenses, so I really need to use something with a little more precision.

Formatting and re-installing is out of the question.  With all of the software, files, and custom settings, it would result in far too much downtime.

Come to think of it, the last legitimate program I had this much trouble uninstalling was Roxio, lol - and for a time there was a cleaner for it to address that.

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