Uninstall Program will not work

[jackson548]

I have a two month old Lenovo Computer running Windows 7 32 bit. I attempted to run a Malwarebyte scan and the computer froze. Since that time I have had many problems. For one I cannot uninstall any program. When I go to programs and features and click on a program to uninstall nothing happens. I have tried on several programs but still nothing happens. What should I do?
By the way the only browsers that will work on this computer is Firefox. Chrome will nto work nor will IE8. Even Firefox freezes up every 30 min or so in case this piece of information might give a clue to what is causing my problem. I have run a scan with Spybot and with malwarbytes and one was clean and the other I removed some adware problems.

 

[richc46]

Try to uninstall with this
Revo Uninstaller Pro - Uninstall software, remove programs, solve uninstall problems

Try this to fix the problems
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

If it does not work, try system restore. Go back to before the problem.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html

If you can (try safe mode if necessary) run an antivirus scan, just to be sure.

 

[jackson548]

I have run scans with malwarebyites and spybot FYI. I tried to run the command sfc scan now and i got a message that I need to be the administrator... well I am the administrator.. so how do I run a scan as an administrator when i am the administrator? I appredciate your help.

 

[richc46]

Bring up this cmd and then type the sfc command

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/783-elevated-command-prompt.html

 

[nJoyo]

Try Uniblue. You can clear most of the bad registry files, often that could be an issue.http://www.sevenforums.com/editpost.php?do=editpost&p=915046

 

[dranfu]

In windows registry, there is a location that most software programs use to store their Uninstall Information, it is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. In this Key, most of the programs you have installed will store a link to the executable, or program, that is responisble for uninstalling that application.

For example, if you wanted to uninstall Google's Chrome browser, but couldn't do it from the Programs control panel applet, then you could visit this registry key to get more information. For Chrome, we find that its uninstall Key contains the following information:

"C:\Documents and Settings\{CENSORED}\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\5.0.375.99\Installer\setup.exe" --uninstall

Notice that the information tells us that to uninstall Chrome we need to run the setup.exe file, found within our Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\5.0.375\Installer folder, with the --uninstall switch.

How to do this?
· Open up a command prompt (Hit start and type CMD)
· type CD "Users\User'sName\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\5.0.375\Installer\setup.exe " and remember to include quotes around the path
· Then a space and then --uninstall. This should launch the uninstall commands within the Google chrome installer and uninstall the program for you.

This same process can be used to find the uninstaller for other programs. But note that I am on a Windows XP machine while creating this tutorial, and some things, like path names, may be different in Win7.

Another thing you can try is using the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, this only works on .msi installers, however. For some reason, I can't find the download online at the moment, but try this Google Search as a starting point. You can also still get it from SoftPedia

Another very usefull tool is Ccleaner, which you can download here, if you don't already use it. Ccleaner is a great cleaner, very well written and very safe. It would be a good idea to run its system cleaners and registry cleaner on your PC. It is safe, because it only cleans registry entries that it can verify are obsolete . It does not try to guess, like some other cleaners.

Running SFC/Scan Now may be helpful, as others have mentioned. It would also be a good idea to run chkdsk /f and then select yes, so that it runs after you reboot.

A better solution for Anti Virus would be to use an Anti Virus Live Boot Disc, such a tool would allow you to scan for virus infection while the operating system is not running, making it very hard for a virus to hide itself, or defend itself from deletion.Go here to view a list of 13 of the best ones. Keep in mind that you must download them, burn them to a cd, and then reboot with the CD in your CD Player in order to use them.

Hope that helps, and good luck
Good Luck.

 

[dranfu]

Another thing to note. If you do not feel comfortable accessing your registry, but you still would like to view the uninstaller information that is stored there, you can use the Command Prompt (CMD) to query the registry. It is very easy to do:

First, bring up the command prompt by clicking on the start orb and typing cmd

Next, inisde of the command window, type the following command

 reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall".

You should then see a listing of all the software that has registered an uninstall command.

You now need to choose one to look at further. Keeping with our google chrome example, we could try use this command to view a little deeper:

 reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Google Chrome"

If ran correctly, the output will look similar to this:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Google Chrome
    DisplayName REG_SZ  Google Chrome
    UninstallString     REG_SZ  "C:\Documents and Settings\BY9193\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\5.0.375.99\Installer\setup.exe" --u
ninstall
    InstallLocation     REG_SZ  C:\Documents and Settings\BY9193\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application
    DisplayIcon REG_SZ  C:\Documents and Settings\BY9193\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
    NoModify    REG_DWORD       0x1
    NoRepair    REG_DWORD       0x1
    Publisher   REG_SZ  Google Inc.
    Version     REG_SZ  5.0.375.99
    DisplayVersion      REG_SZ  5.0.375.99
    InstallDate REG_SZ  20100713

Note that within this output, you can see the setup.exe --uninstall command.

In this way, you don't have to load up the registry, in order to find the info you need.

Have fun