How in the Tech

Removing Broken Entries from Windows Add/Remove List

By Adam Myers ⋅ July 2, 2008 ⋅ Tags: Windows

The Add/Remove Programs dialog – recently re-branded in Vista to Programs and Features – is located in the Control Panel and maintains a list of all the installed programs on your computer. This is a convenient feature as it provides a quick snapshot into your PC while allowing the removal/uninstall of programs in one easy interface. There are times, however, where the list is not entirely accurate, usually showing programs that you’ve long since removed. No problem right? You’ll just highlight the offending program and uninstall it again. Wrong! Instead, you are greeted with a rather intimidating warning dialog.

This can occur for a few reasons; you may have deleted the folder that contained the installed program or a previous uninstall attempt did not fully complete it’s task. If you are like me, you like to have a clean and organized system. Thankfully, this annoyance is solvable and it involves our friend, the Windows Registry.

1. Click Start and in the Start Search box type regedit.exe
2. Traverse the Registry Editor navigation tree on the left hand side down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall



3. Expand the Uninstall tree in the left panel to reveal a long list of hexcode numbers, like {00010409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7} or {FE434300-A311-4BE1-93BA-B74BC8C4017B}. If you are lucky, you may find a folder with the actual name of the program you are looking for. If not, you must click on each of the long strings in the left panel to find the broken program in DisplayName in the right panel. Here I`m showing Windows Live Sign-In Assistant.

   

4. With the desired program found under DisplayName, right click on the key in the left panel and select Export. This is a slightly more tricky registry change than I normally do so we want to be sure we have a backup of the registry entry. Save the .reg file in a safe location just in case.



5. With the entry successfully exported, right click on the key a second time, but this time choose Delete.

If you now reload the Programs and Features dialog in Control Panel you should see that the troublesome entry has been removed. However, if you notice the program remains in the list you should restore the backup .reg from above – just double click on it to execute – as the wrong key has been removed. Carefully reskim the Uninstall tree in Registry Editor and see if there is another key that also holds the DisplayName of the program you wish to remove.