How to delete entries in the Add/Remove?

How do I delete the entries in the Add/Remove Programs Dialog Box? The programs are already removed from my system. I may have even removed several Registry items associated with the programs. I wish to clean-up the Add/Remove Programs Dialog Box from programs I used to have on my computer including programs downloaded from the Internet. The "Remove" buttom does not remove the program listed and usually causes the screen to semi-freeze (the mouse curser still moves).

This question was answered on October 25, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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To do that, we need to modify the registry manually; the key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry To launch Registry Editor, click Start, click Run, type "regedit" and then click OK To get help, after you have launched Registry Editor, click the Help menu and then click Help Topics.

Before you edit the registry, make sure you understand how to back up and restore it if a problem occurs For information about how to do this, view the "Restoring the Registry" Help topic Here is a quick reference for back up Registries

1 Click Start, Run, type Regedit to launch Registry Editor

2 In Registry Editor, select "My Computer" in the left tree and then click the File menu.

3 Click Export

4 On the Export Registry File dialog box, check the 'Export range' is All and save it to a file such as c:\backupreg.reg

For information about how to edit the registry, view the "Changing Keys and Values" Help Note that you should back up the registry before you edit it.

Regarding this problem, after you run regedit.exe, please go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

Key and find the item you want to remove among its sub-keys Please right click on the proper sub-key to delete it.

About the author

Posted by Kareem of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on October 25, 2004

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