Hello all
The Add/Remove 2.11 is a nice little program that works but I would give it
a 70% mark.
1) It came up with red marks on those lines in my Add Remove page thatI
couldn't remove. It allowed me to separately remove either:
A) the line on the page if this is all there is or:
B) parts or all of the programs left in the hard drive.
BUT
It can't see every thing.
Because after a successful action that went smooth and very well I went back
to the Add Remove page and there are still some things on it. Those things
that are still marked on the Add Remove page doesn't even exist anywhere on
the hard drive and I checked it out manually piece by piece, nor do they
have any digital weight on the Add Remove page.
The name of the item is there on the left but on the right where it says
how many MB this thing is, this is blank.
I believe the best thing is the Format and clean install is the best movein
such cases and I'll keep this nifty little program for the future
Thanks to all
You do not need to reinstall XP to remove erroneous entries from Add/
Remove Programs. Everything you see in Add/Remove Programs is
"somewhere", you just have to find it.
I also tried the Add Remove Pro which was interesting, but here is a
way to do these things by hand:
Everything you see in Add/Remove programs comes from individual
entries in the registry.
There is no undo or quit without saving option in the registry editor,
so before you make changes, backup your registry with this free tool
called ERUNT:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
If you do not install ERUNT you are taking some risk with your
registry and some of what follows will not make sense since I use the
ERUNT installation as an example.
To open the registry editor, click Start, Run and in the box enter:
regedit
Click OK.
Using regedit, navigate here:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
There is a lot of stuff in the Uninstall folder and what you see under
it may not be obvious unless you scroll through them one by one.
Start looking through the list on the left and you will start to see
things you recognize.
Not everything you see under the Uninstall folder will show up in Add/
Remove Programs, but everything you see in Add/Remove Programs will
show up under the Uninstall folder.
As you land on each entry in the Uninstall folder on the left, on the
right hand side is the contents of the registry key for each installed
program.
Find some Uninstall folders with names you recognize. You will see
some values under Uninstall that have an information value on the
right called DisplayName. That is what you see in Add/Remove
Programs.
You may also see an entry called UninstallString. That is what will
get run when you click the Remove button in Add/Remove programs.
There is a lot of other interesting information that will start to
make sense from what you see in Add/Remove Programs.
You will have some things under the Uninstall folder that may not
appear to make sense or not have much information under them on the
right hand side. Just leave these alone unless you know what the are.
If you installed ERUNT, it will show up in Add/Remove programs and you
also now be able to find the ERUNT program in the list of Uninstall
folders on the left and see the DisplayName and UninstallString for
ERUNT on the right.
You can search for an entry under the Uninstall folder to help you
find things that you see in Add/Remove Programs. In regedit, click
and highlight the Uninstall folder on the left hand side, then click
Edit, Find and search for the program name you see displayed in Add/
Remove Programs and you will be taken right to the entry. You may
land on the DisplayName value on the right and can see that the
appropriate Uninstall folder will be open on the left.
If you are convinced the program is uninstalled after looking on your
hard disk and the entry still shows up in Add/Remove programs, it can
be deleted from the Uninstall list in the registry by right clicking
the folder in the Uninstall list and choosing delete. You will not
see the program listed in Add/Remove Programs again. Deleting a value
under Uninstall is not the way to uninstall a program - it will just
remove it from the Add/Remove Programs list.
You can also export the appropriate Uninstall key to a file before
deleting it. If something goes wrong, you can import the file later
to replace just the registry key you accidentally deleted. That will
not reinstall the program, but it will show up again in Add/Remove
Programs.