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Remove Items from Add/ Remove Programs
08.03.04
Remove Items from Add/Remove Programs

Total posts: 10


By Neil J. Rubenking

I share a computer with others in my family. At times, people have used the Add/Remove Programs applet to delete whatever they don't recognize. This is a major hassle for me because I lose all of the preferences and data associated with the program. Is there any way to take a program off the Add/Remove Programs list without actually uninstalling the program? I am running Windows XP Home with Service Pack 1. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Andrew Brady

It's not hard to remove the uninstall information. The real trick is keeping it available in case you actually want to uninstall the program at some point. Launch Regedit from the Start menu's Run dialog and navigate to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MicrosoftWindows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

Each subkey of this key represents an Add/Remove Programs item. Some have sensible names, like AvantGo Client. Others have GUIDs for names—strings of letters and numbers in curly braces, like "{D6DE02C7-1F47-11D4-9515-00105AE4B89A}."

First check the legible names. If you don't find the desired item, select the GUID-names one at a time and scan the values in the right-hand pane for information that would link this entry to the program you're seeking.

Highlight the subkey below Uninstall that contains the item you want removed. Select Export from the File menu and export it to a .REG file. Then just delete the subkey. It will no longer appear in Add/Remove Programs. If at some future time you wish to uninstall the program, double-click on the .REG file to restore the uninstall data and then launch Add/Remove Programs.

If you happen to have the passwords that will allow you to log on as each user of the system, you can take a different approach and disable Add/Remove Programs entirely for those users. Log on as your daughter, for example, and launch REGEDIT. Navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MicrosoftWindows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Uninstall

If the Uninstall subkey below Policies does not exist, create it. In the right-hand pane, find or create a DWORD value named NoAddRemovePrograms. Double-click on it and set its data to 1. Now this user will not have access to Add/Remove Programs. Repeat for the other users. On an XP Pro system, a user with full administrator rights can lock other users out of Add/Remove Programs by using the Group Policy Editor. This tool is not present in Windows XP Home.