OT: Yarg.
 

So I got myself a little early Christmas present, but installed it to the wrong hard drive. No bother, I figured, I'll just uninstall and reinstall. Unfortunately our power went splat for a few minutes halfway through, so when I tried to run the uninstaller again, it crashed with some suitably obscure message.

No bother, I figured, so I deleted what was left manually, and went to reinstall. And herein lies my problem. Whenever I start the installer, the first thing it does is ask me if I want to remove the program (???). I say yes, and it crashes with a nice obscure message. I went through my registry and removed any reference to the program I could find, and that got me to the installer launcher at least, but when I click on Install, it goes back to it's trying to uninstall non-existant files problem.

So... Anyone know a good registry cleaner that will clear out any junk I might have missed that might be causing problems, and/or a good utility for getting rid of useless files that might be causing the same problem?

Re: OT: Yarg.
 

I have used Unlocker through CNet/Download dot com for troublesome problems.

Unlocker @ Download.com

Re: OT: Yarg.
 

some programs install under other names. ex. Nero is found under two names in the registry entries. 'Ahead' is one folder and 'Nero' is the other. In the registry, you will find references to both names. Check to make sure there are no other names attached to the program as you have a little piece of it left in the registry.

Re: OT: Yarg.
 

Thanks Cad. Unfortunately, Unlocker only seems to deal with files that are being ornery and not shutting down/allowing themselves to be deleted, etc. My problem is that there are some leftover registry entries/files that are making the program think it's still installed, when it's not.

And since the program was made by Microsoft, I don't think it would be a good idea to go through the registry, nuking all the MS entries. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: OT: Yarg.
 

Search the http://support.microsoft.com site for manual uninstall instructions for that software.

Re: OT: Yarg.
 

Check out RegMon

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...es/regmon.mspx

Run this, then the installer. It will show you every registry the installer reads or writes.

Re: OT: Yarg.
 

That requires a successful install. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif What he needs is for someone who has installed this with Regmon running to give him the log file for it.

Re: OT: Yarg.
 

Maybe not - The installer has to read the registry entries to know that it's already been installed.

Re: OT: Yarg.
 

What narf said. RegMon will show the installer opening a registry key to check if it is there.