Remove Invalid entries in Add/Remove Programs

Sometimes when you uninstall a program, corresponding Add/Remove entry may not be removed. This may be due to incomplete uninstallation or the poorly designed uninstaller itself. To remove the invalid/orphaned entries from the Add/Remove applet manually.

• Start Regedit.exe and locate the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall

• Backup the branch to a file.
  
• Locate the corresponding software entry from the list and delete it
• Close Registry Editor

There are some {GUID} sub-keys under the Uninstall key. Now what?

Under Uninstall you may see some {GUIDs}. Each {GUID} represents a software product that you've installed. Under the above key, click each {GUID} entry and verify the DisplayName shown in the right-pane. Once you locate the item that you want to remove from Add/Remove Programs, backup the entry to a REG file and then delete the key. BTW, the DisplayName string is reflected in the Add/Remove Programs applet.

Example: PC Inspector File Recovery has the GUID {0DD140D3-9563-481E-AA75-BA457CBDAEF2}Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall \ {0DD140D3-9563-481E-AA75-BA457CBDAEF2}]
"DisplayName"="PC Inspector File Recovery"


Orphaned entries are those whose uninstallers are not available [but the registry entry might point to the actual uninstaller file]. You may also see errors like "missing install.log or uninstall.log" while trying to uninstall from Add/Remove Programs. The install.log / uninstall.log contains the uninstallation information about a program. When you remove a program from Add/Remove Programs, the log files come into play and remove the corresponding software entries from the registry and the files in the hard disk.
If the LOG files are missing, you may need to reinstall the application again (in the same path) and then try a clean uninstall again. In some cases, the application might be removed, but the entries may still exist in the Add/Remove Programs list. Orphaned entries are usually a result of a system restore rollback operation. Use the above method to remove the Uninstall entries.

Awww yeah the first step works wonderfully, nice tut as always Tech.

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Glad it fixed your issue man..thanks and you're welcome.