Program does not appear in control panel > programs

[tonyvella]

I installed a dictionary and uninstalled it. It still appears in 'all programs' but does not appear in control panel > programs and features nor in revo uninstaller. When I click the icon in start > all programs, the dictionary opens and works well. Now it is causing a message 'error reading trayicon 1 -> visible, etc.' every time I boot up.

Can anyone suggest some way of getting rid of it permanently, please? Thanks in advance.

 

[Britton30]

I installed a dictionary and uninstalled it. It still appears in 'all programs' but does not appear in control panel > programs and features nor in revo uninstaller. When I click the icon in start > all programs, the dictionary opens and works well. Now it is causing a message 'error reading trayicon 1 -> visible, etc.' every time I boot up.

Can anyone suggest some way of getting rid of it permanently, please? Thanks in advance.

That's contradictory? if you uninstalled it how can it work?
Right click the entry in All Program, Remove from this list.

 

[tonyvella]

Indeed! I uninstalled the dictionary with its own uninstaller and yet there is still a folder in start > all programs inside which there is the dictionary's icon. When I click this icon the dictionary opens.

I tried reinstalling and uninstalling with revo-uninstaller including the registry entries revo discovered at the end of the process. Yet, the folder is still there in start > all programs and the icon for the dictionary STILL opens the dictionary which works perfectly. So I manually deleted the folder and the next time I restarted I got the message (against the dictionary's name) 'error reading trayicon 1 -> visible: cannot create system shell, etc..'

Yes, there must be a word stronger than "contradictory" for this, but certainly not one to be used in mixed company. I am truly lost.

 

[Britton30]

LOL, yeah I don't post such language here.

Try a search for the exact name of the dictionary program. Was it truly installed or did it run as a stand-alone program?

 

[DavidE]

If I had such an issue I'd post the name of the dictionary program that is causing the problem.
It could be some type of malware, and needs help from a security expert.
Maybe someone here has experience with your dictionary program and can give first-hand help with solving the problem.
Without knowing what program, many helpers here (including me) are shooting in the dark

 

[tonyvella]

Thanks for trying.
The dictionary is Danish-English-Danish and is officially called "engelsk-dansk dansk-engelsk large". It is produced by gads-forlag (www.gads-forlag.dk) and works by the word-selection method; i.e. you highlight a word in any program and press Control-F12 and the dictionary opens on that word (in English if the selected word is in Danish, and in Danish if the selected word is in English). It has its own installer, repairer, uninstaller. I have dropped them a word about the problem but have not heard from them yet. I'll wait a few more days and write again.

 

[Sergeant Steve]

Go to Start>All Programs>"dictionary folder name" then right click the Dictionary program and left click "Open File Location". This will give you an idea of where it actually installed to.

I have come across the odd program that had an uninstaller not uninstall the program, or it didn't include an uninstall shortcut in the Program Folder and I had to locate it myself.

I dare say you could "install" it to the same location again & see if it says it is already installed, or you could "install" it again and then run the same installer file to see if that uninstalls it any better.

Failing all of that you'll have to go about it the hard way by searching the registry for any entries relating to it. Of course this is a very dangerous thing to do as I'm sure the other posters here will back me up on, and should only be done if you want to fully clear all the remnants out of your system. If you have never edited your registry before, then I would not recommend you do so.

 

[tonyvella]

Sergeant Steve, thanks for your input. I reinstalled the dictionary as you suggested and uninstalled it with revo-uninstaller. Both installation and uninstallation went without a hitch. The dictionary now no longer appears in the control panel nor does the old icon that got it started again. So far so good. However, now, whenever I boot my laptop I get the following alert:
ORDBOG: Error reading TrayIcon 1 -> Visible: Cannot Create System Shell Notification Icon

I looked everywhere for remnants of the Ordbog installation and all I found was this entry in the Registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
-Software
--Gads Forlag
---Bogskab
----1.1
and the following files in the 1.1 folder:
http://cjoint.com/?DFooiz5SMxX

1. Would it be safe to delete the entire gads-forlag registry entry? As you see all the files are in Danish and appear to refer only to this particular program.
2. Is there a way to rename the gads-forlag entry under software to see what happens and then rename it back to gads-forlag if something goes wrong?

I thank you in advance for your patience and help. I mentioned earlier that I had written to the company for assistance but this morning the Danish server returned my email undelivered.

 

[DavidE]

I would first try the Notification Area Icon reset to see if that fixes it:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/13102-notification-area-icons-reset.html

 

[Sergeant Steve]

David I guess that may work, but it still leaves the question as to what is creating the error. It suggests that there is still something lingering that is tied in with the install of the Dictionary that is trying to create a tray icon from something that now no longer exists. Resetting the Notification Icon might not help the problem, the Error message "ORDBOG" means DICTIONARY, so it suggests that there is something related to the dictionary still there.

tonyvella, I would check your startup items (Start>All Programs>Startup) and see if there is anything related to the dictionary in there.

The other place to check is the Microsoft Config settings (it lets you enable or disable startup items or services which load at startup, it also lets you get to Safe Mode if you can't get the whole F8 thing to work).

Hit the Windows Key and R at the same time and type "msconfig", click the startup tab and sort it either A>Z by Startup Item or by Command. If there is a program trying to start from the same location as the dictionary was installed to then I would just disable it. This is safer than deleting the registry key as it can be enabled again.

Speaking of the Registry Key, from the looks of a few of the names and values, it looks like it's just a place where the dictionary stored its settings: X&Y Screen Position, Side by Side Dictionaries, Last viewed Dictionary etc. Probably not used by anything else considering the names of the folders etc, but I would still do the startup items check before deleting a registry key.

(As for "is it safe to delete registry keys": A lot of people say that Windows suffers more when you delete unused keys and don't defragment and compress the registry afterwards. Leaving redundant code in it is not as performance hitting as leaving big holes in it. Besides that I found out exactly why you can't just dive in and delete registry keys that to you seem empty and/or unused, somehow I had managed to get my login screen to only display a single user with the "Other User" being a Text box to type the Username, I deleted about 2 or 3 keys to try and set it back to having all three user accounts on the logon screen and and did indeed fix it, but in the process broke my Windows 7 License & it couldn't reactivate so I had to ask a friend for a copy of the registry keys from his PC, which luckily for me fixed my license).

 

[tonyvella]

Hello Steve, I did everything you suggested by unfortunately no joy. So I took the original software out and reinstalled it from scratch. I set the dictionary's values to default. I selected the word "redundant" from your previous post, pressed control+F12 and got the following:

So at least I see that it's working fine. Best solution, I guess, is to quit while you're ahead. I shall leave the dictionary installed. My Danish is not expert enough that I will never need a dictionary.