what is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ScsiPort\SpecialTargetList\WormYAMAHA__CDR102__________ doing in my win 10 1903 registry???

Hi Peter

Do you have an optical (CD\DVD) drive on your PC?

If so, open Disk Management (accessible by right clicking your Start Button, expand the CD/DVD drive section, what is the Make and exact Model of that drive?

By the time the smaller engineering school I attended and worked for gained access, ARPANET was already evolving from its original purpose, but I also had connections with portions of the military, industrial and education complex that was its origins.

The one thing I'd hope you learn is that the registry can't always be "read" and that playing with portions of it is potentially dangerous to the health of your operating system.  Changing or removing portions may cause unexpected damage, since keys or sections such as these may have evolved from their original purpose.

The registry contains many, likely thousands of such remnants, but that still represents a tiny fraction of its entire size and since its a database and not read sequentially, these additional portions cause no true overhead when their integrity is sound.

The problem with removing items is that whether or not the particular keys are required for your specific hardware, they have interconnections that can create unexpected problems when damaged.  So its best to leave them well enough alone, since these problems may not display until later during hardware changes or operating system upgrades, which with Windows 10 occur roughly once every 6 months.

Rob

That key and many others are legacy components of Windows going back many years, often to the origins of Windows NT and the devices that existed at that time, though in many cases they've also evolved to take on different purposes from those originally intended.

In this case, that key is one of over a dozen that also exist on my own Windows 8.1 system and a search finds it on systems going back to at least Windows 2000, so it's just a benign holdover to the hardware and systems of an earlier time, that if your PC contains certain hardware might fail if you chose to mess with them as indiscriminately as you have done.

In this specific case the drive involved was a Yamaha CDR102 CD Writer device that was common back before the turn of the millennium, which is why it's so difficult to find any accurate current information relating to its true purpose.  The following ancient FreeBSD thread from 1997 is discussing it and the drive was likely already quite old even then, so I found little else still out there about it.

https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/aic7xxx/1997-October/000234.html

This Google Books page displays an explanation that the base \ScsiPort\SpecialTargetList\ key "Contains keys that identify certain SCSI hard disks that must be handled specially."  Gee, it was a stretch to glean that gem from such an obvious string, wasn't it?

Finally, the thing you have to realize is that words don't always mean what you think, so in this case the "Worm" portion has nothing to do with malware and instead this acronym has the also quite obvious meaning (to someone from that era) of Write once read many (WORM) which was a common term for writeable storage devices from the time before CD and DVD drives were invented.

So like many today, you believe that everything is literal and are completely unaware of the decades of history behind the PC, let alone that of the computer itself which preceded your own existence by many years, it not decades.

The answer is out there, you just have to learn how to find it and not jump to conclusions.

Rob

thank you for clarifying what these strange keys were i appreciate your time answering my question "is this malware" so i take it the answer is no not malware and yes you can delete the target strings

thank you so much for the write once read many explanation. i do however take exception with your statement that i believe everything in a literal way

please dont tell me what i believe and that i lack any appreciation of the history of computers...i started operating computers in 1973 however i have not made studying the never ending story of windows development my lifes work . While you were doing that i worked with the US Dept Defense  and Raytheon inventing carbon fibre aluminium honeycomb radar dampening stealth composites and designed mars rover chassis components and helped design Canada Arm 2 for the International Space Station so i learnt an entirely different set of acronyms DARPA being my favorite. Do you know what a PDGF is ?(power data grappling fixture) for Canada Arm 2.for me thats an obvious acronym for a rocket scientist from that era So you see we just have different backgrounds and each of us has developed a unique set of skills. One of my skills is when i see something i dont understand is to ask questions and with luck increase my skills.

how many people who own pc's go digging around their registrys anyway. I just found something that i thought was odd and wanted to check it out to learn what it was ,so once again thank you for the answer. i was not jumping to conclusions or i would have posted help me please i have a nasty malware infection oh no the sky is falling help...not simply asking whats this doing in my registry.

thanks again for your time which i greatly appreciate

thank you for responding to my question

I do not have any optical drives the key was from scsi ports/scsi targets  and there was a list of dvd and cd and hdd drives none of which matched anything on my system. because of this i made a backup of my system and deleted all the scsi target entries and rebooted my pc. i checked my hdd external scsi drive and it works ok. i just wondered where this scsi target list might have come from. when i see worm in part of a key description i get a little worried. i scanned with microsoft security scanner and i also have webroot secure anywhere running in real time and there were no hits on any scans for malware. having deleted these wierd target list items my computer is still running ok. so i made a new system image backup file .         I  dont think I need a fix just your opinion on what these keys do....my system is win 10 1903 updated ,Hardware: EVGA Z390 FTW main board with Bios overclocking to 5.1Ghz, 32Gb 3200Mhz Ram Intel I9 9900K cpu, Nvidia 2080RTX Ti Ultra Graphics ,Intel Nvme peknw51  478Gb optane memory stick with Intel Rapid Storage Tech.  a Crucial 2Tb SSD  an Hdd 750gb  a Closed Loop cpu Cooler and an EVGA DG-77 RGB case with K-Boost to 4.9Ghz for gaming also a 320Hz Alienware 25 inch monitor with G Sync and a Logitech G910 RGB  keyboard and finally a Logitech G935 7.1 Surround Headset....Power to the Gamer!