removing programs

[darbykidd]

In the Control Panel: Add/Remove Programs I want to remove a lot of the old programs that are no longer on the machine. WHen I hit "remove" sometimes it brings up an uninstall window but then I get an error saying that the uninstall file cannot be found or something like that. Is there any other way I can get rid of these entries. LIke I said the programs themselves have been deleted. I'm running Windows 98SE

thanks for the help.

[rangeral]

You could try tweakui available anywhere or xsetup http://www.xteq.com/ you could also do a find in regedit for each app and delete each instance of it it finds on either left or rite panes, hit f3 to continue til regedit says its done.

[Psycho Logical]

"the programs themselves have been deleted."

There is a BIG difference between uninstalling (removing) a program and just deleting it. It is not at all clear from your post which you have done.

There are two separate methods for correctly un-installing Windows programs:

• Some programs include an uninstall option as part of their installation process, and this option should then be available in its Start > Programs listing. If it is there, this is the preferred method.

• For those programs that do not have their own uninstaller, the Windows Add/Remove Programs procedure in Control Panel should be used.

If you have used Explorer or even DOS commands to just delete the program EXE file, this will prevent the program from running, but will not do other things like removing registry entries. The only time this method is used is for a true stand-alone program file that runs under Windows but does not require installation. Some small third-party or downloaded utility programs may be in this category.

Even after you have correctly uninstalled a program, there are instances when the program name still appears in the Add/Remove list. This is caused by an incorrectly written uninstaller routine.

If you want to remove the name of a correctly uninstalled program from the list displayed by Add/Remove, see this MSKB article:

How to Manually Remove Programs from the Add/Remove Programs List (Q247501)