Windows Programs missing from CP programs list

Windows 7 Home Premium SP1.

I was having a fiddle with a DAW (MuLab) and in my haste to find a particular VST, I inadvertantly downloaded and tried to install a Win XP application which fell over before the installation was completed. When I looked in Control Panel, Uninstall a Program, I immediately noticed that many applications are now missing from the list - it's only showing 42, even though all the missing programs still seem to work just fine.

After some searching the internet, I've tried:

- creating a new admin user account - no difference.
- sfc /scannow - no errors.
- system restore - tried two different restore points from Safe Mode, neither completed and the problem persists (although I had to reinstall the DAW so the restore did something).

I suspect something got corrupted during that borked install but I don't know what else I can do. Any ideas?

 

Nothing got corrupted. Some (rare but happens) companies don't know how to do a setup program, where they don't register themselves to Program and Feature uninstall program list.

Brilliant I know. Shows the dev laziness to do things right, let alone test.
Or I guess they think that their software is so awsome you will never uninstall it.

So what to do: GO where the program is installed, you should be able to find uninstall.exe or something like that. Run it, and it should do the trick. Else, then that, if the software doesn't install a driver or something like that, you can just delete it, and if you want you can delete the registry key in the registry, just look under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE and also HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software for the program name, and hit delete.

Finally, you can remove the program settings and temp file, by looking for the directory of the program and delete it, under: C:\Users\<ACCOUNT NAME>\AppData (hidden folder)\Roaming, and also C:\Users\<ACCOUNT NAME>\Local.

Lastly, some program puts stuff under ProgramData folder you can find it under C:\ProgramData (hidden folder)

And voila, you are done doing the manual uninstall.

 

I'm not sure Yadda is asking how to manually uninstall a program, more that a load of entries in the add remove program list have vanished.

Or maybe i have miss read the explanation, if so I'll shut the hell up.

 

I read it as lots of entries having disappeared, too!

 

Thanks for the detailed response, GoodBytes. Unfortunately, as Corky and Jinq-sea said, the entries were once present but have now disappeared - I'd estimate that the list is now less than half as long as it used to be.

 

My guess is the entries in the registry have either been deleted, commented out, or messed about in some other way. If you want to go to the bother they would be listed under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

If not it maybe easier to just reinstall the missing programs so it re-writes the needed registry entries.

 

Thanks Corky, I'll have a look this evening.

 

do you have some sort of registry cleaner installed? I hazard a guess that you do, and you have allowed it to cleanup just about everything, and it's removed the uninstallers.

 

Just checked in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall and yup, at first glance it seems to tally with what I'm seeing in CP.

What a pain in the behind.

@RichCreedy - I haven't installed or run a registry cleaner or anything like that for a long time. The last time would have been several months ago when I used DDU prior to installing the GTX 580.