I have a huge amount of events logged in the security logs for Object Access to the registry and other object access events. I want to stop the auditing of these events. I have tried to turn it off in Active Directory Group Policy, Local Group Policy, etc. However, it's still logging the events.  How can I tell where this auditing it coming from?

You might check with AskDS: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2011/03/11/getting-the-effective-audit-policy-in-windows-7-and-2008-r2.aspx  

This informative PDF guide also covers various important parts and explains in depth about the secrets of Event Viewer for Active Directory Security Auditing : http://www.lepide.com/guide/secrets-of-event-viewer-for-active-directory-security-auditing.pdf