Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Industrial Strength]

while i scour the internet looking for a solution to my problem, maybe one of you tech gurus will be faster...

i have an old laptop on which i installed XP over win98. all the programs that were installed prior to the XP upgrade are still there.

the problem is that i now want to uninstall most of them to make the system leaner for basic internet use, but all the previous shortcuts to their uninstalls were deleted in the upgrade. i have searched the drive for all the uninstall executables that i could find, and dug into the programs folder looking for them. i��ve only found a couple that way.

of course, the add/remove window doesn��t show anything that was installed prior to the upgrade, so no help there.

are there any utilities (preferably free/share) that can root out and kill the programs? i could do a format and reinstall, but i��m trying to avoid that.

thanks for any tips. hope it��s clear enough what i meant.
IS

ps. should have thought about getting rid of the beasties before the upgrade i guess!

[Demophobe]

http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_104_12702.html

Give this a try.

Some more here:

http://www.programurl.com/utilities-uninstallers-1.htm

Are the programs running on boot? What programs are they? Can't you just delete the folders, start menu shortcuts and registry entries? If you can't do the registry thing, get a freeware registry app and let it scan...it should find the problems.

This is shareware....you will have to pay eventually, but it will work at least once...then ditch it or buy it.

http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic/download/

I use the full version...a great program.

[Industrial Strength]

Thanks for the tips Demo.

The programs don't run on boot. They're just normal progs like PaintShop, Adobe, iTunes, etc. I just want to uninstall them because they aren't needed.

I wasn't sure that just deleting all their folders and cleaning the registry would really get them out of the system. I can do that if all else fails.

I've used Registry Mechanic on other computers. Good program, I'll give it a try. I usually use Ace Utilities now, but it doesn't even recognize that it is installed on the system now.

IS

[Industrial Strength]

I ended up formating and reinstalling.
Probably the best solution in the long run.
IS

[Demophobe]

Well, a bit extreme, but ....

You sound like me....can't stand having junk on the system, even if it's not causing a problem.

It's unusual that when upgrading, Windows didn't format, or at least ask about it. Win98 runs FAT32, whereas WinXP prefers NTFS, although it does support FAT32.

[Industrial Strength]

It asked about formating the first time I upgraded, but I didn't want to lose the data on the computer. (Nowhere else to put it at the time.)
This time, moved the data off and blew it all out.
Running great now.
IS