Thanks johnking. Nice to 'see' you again too.
I hadn't thought of trying import from regedit, but I'm glad I didn't, because that wouldn't have fixed my 'merge' problem.
I imported reg.reg via regedit, then right-clicked and merged my nasties.reg without a problem.
If not too much trouble, johnking, can you try explaining to me what it means to "[trash] the Registry entries for Registry files", and have you any ideas as to how one might have done so?
Thanks again, Bud!