Nothing appears in ADD / REMOVE Program applet in Control Panel

[Guest]

Hi,

My Add/Remove applet opens empty nothing populates in there, basic icons and
navigation buttons are there but nothing in main window. Following
instructions given in some other threads, I do have chronological listing of
installed programs
after address book @
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. I have also
followed another thread and MS KB article to check registry entries for
appwiz.cpl to register and other modules to be registered for appwiz. Of
course nothing works. Unfortunately, no registry backup available (new
install and corrupted already - but probably my fault though - as I have
messed with turning off some services). Restore took off (promptly) all my
FireFox add-ons so I need to get back those later - no biggy. Back to the
issue, so where do I go now ? Any information if "appwiz.cpl" depends on some
services which I may have turned off ??? This the only thing I can think of
as of now.

Any idea, comments, help, assistance or even a scream on me for my stupidity
is welcome. Once again, thanks for your time and help in this regard.
Danial

 

[JCO]

What about a restore from the CD?
It should repair the issues. Just put the CD in as if your going to do an
install. It will detect your installation and eventually ask if you want
repair your current installation.

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM]

Hi,

My Add/Remove applet opens empty nothing populates in there, basic icons
and
navigation buttons are there but nothing in main window. Following
instructions given in some other threads, I do have chronological listing
of
installed programs
after address book @
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. I have also
followed another thread and MS KB article to check registry entries for
appwiz.cpl to register and other modules to be registered for appwiz. Of
course nothing works. Unfortunately, no registry backup available (new
install and corrupted already - but probably my fault though - as I have
messed with turning off some services). Restore took off (promptly) all my
FireFox add-ons so I need to get back those later - no biggy. Back to the
issue, so where do I go now ? Any information if "appwiz.cpl" depends on
some
services which I may have turned off ??? This the only thing I can think
of
as of now.

Any idea, comments, help, assistance or even a scream on me for my
stupidity
is welcome. Once again, thanks for your time and help in this regard.
Danial

Can you scroll down and see anything below the blank space?
See Blank space in Add/Remove: See line 226 (right hand side)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_a.htm#ws

 

[Nightowl]

My Add/Remove applet opens empty nothing populates in there, basic icons and
navigation buttons are there but nothing in main window.

Hi Danial

I just posted this reply in your other thread:

Are you sure the Add/Remove Programs panel is really empty? Sometimes
there can be a huge white space there which makes it look as if there
aren't any listings. If you scroll right down to the end, is there
anything there at all?

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/05/26/422076.aspx

 

[Guest]

First of All, I want to THANK JCO, Frank and NightOwl for their time and
assistance.

UPDATE:

1. No there is nothing - no scroll bar - Only message in the window: "Please
wait while list is being populated"

2. For some unknown reasons, I just let it run, and after about 13/14
minutes, it was populated with right information.

So given this scenario, it is populating and there is no White Space,
however, it is taking its sweet time. On hardware side, I am using AMD 64X2
3800+ with 1G of memory, Phoenix - Award BIOS 6.0. I had installed SP2 and
also installed Windows Update download (beginning of Feb.). I may be wrong,
but I guess after that I noticed that i can not get to this applet. But as I
mentioned before, I had tweaked some services (which I always do with a fresh
install and never ran into this scenario) and that is why I thought that I
may have done something wrong this time. As I write, applet is still running
and nothing populated yet.

JCO, I didn't try to repair installation yet, I was wondering if there is a
short cut or a quick fix to this. In absence of that quick fix, I believe,
this may be the second best option.

FRANK and Nightowl, I checked the Kelly Korner and Old New Thing, but most
of those dealing with White Space due to -ve number reference. Which as of
now, apparently is not the case, IMHO.

Any ideas or should I be ready to pop in installation CD...

Once again, I thank you for your time and great help

Danial

p.s.: Nightowl, thanks for reposting it in here, when i was reading that
thread, I didn't realize how old it was and that is why I started a new
thread here. I didn't mean to waste space of this newsletter and time of
everyone who tries to help and resolve issues for us NOBOs.

 

[Nightowl]

UPDATE:

1. No there is nothing - no scroll bar - Only message in the window: "Please
wait while list is being populated"

2. For some unknown reasons, I just let it run, and after about 13/14
minutes, it was populated with right information.

Hi Danial, no problem about the two threads

So your Add/Remove is working, just very slowly. . .

Here are a few things to try; they may not help in your situation but I
think are worth a go before you do a repair install.

1. Open a Command window and at the prompt type the following commands a
line at a time, pressing Enter after each one:
regsvr32 appwiz.cpl
regsvr32 mshtml.dll

2. If you're comfortable editing the Registry, navigate to this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Management\ARPCache
and delete it (be sure to take a backup first!) The ARPCache is where
Add/Remove stores details of the programs that show in the list, but it
doesn't automatically remove those details when you uninstall a program.
Deleting the key will force Windows to rebuild it. If you don't like to
manually edit the Registry, you could copy the lines below into a
Notepad document, save as UpdateARP.reg and then double-click to delete
the key. Copy everything between the dotted lines, including the blank
line at the end (that's important) and be sure to select "All File
Types" in the Save As dialog. You'd need to reboot afterwards, then try
Add/Remove again.

-------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Management\ARPCache]

------------------------

3. Run a system file check. Open a Command window and at the prompt
type: sfc /scannow <enter>.

Please do let us know how you get on

 

[Guest]

UPDATE:

I tried everything to no avail.

- registered appwiz & mshtml - rebooted
- deleted ARPCache - rebooted
- ran sfc /scannow and also /scanonce

none of the above seems to be cooperating with me... I didn't try yet
sfc/purgecache as I am not sure what it does.

Okay, I will try it, once I finish this e-mail. If my computer is still
alive i will post later tomorrow.

Thanks for putting up with me and my putter

Cheers,
Danial

 

[Guest]

Nightowl,

Just an update. I have tried pretty much everything but nothing seems to be
working. So finally (unplanned though, I was explaining to my cousin on how
repair works) I ran windows repair and for some good / bad reasons it did
work. I do thank you for your time, help and advices. I think this is the
least I can do to thank you to let you know is the results. Once again, I
sure appreciate your time and help.

Danial

UPDATE:

1. No there is nothing - no scroll bar - Only message in the window: "Please
wait while list is being populated"

2. For some unknown reasons, I just let it run, and after about 13/14
minutes, it was populated with right information.

Hi Danial, no problem about the two threads

So your Add/Remove is working, just very slowly. . .

Here are a few things to try; they may not help in your situation but I
think are worth a go before you do a repair install.

1. Open a Command window and at the prompt type the following commands a
line at a time, pressing Enter after each one:
regsvr32 appwiz.cpl
regsvr32 mshtml.dll

2. If you're comfortable editing the Registry, navigate to this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Management\ARPCache
and delete it (be sure to take a backup first!) The ARPCache is where
Add/Remove stores details of the programs that show in the list, but it
doesn't automatically remove those details when you uninstall a program.
Deleting the key will force Windows to rebuild it. If you don't like to
manually edit the Registry, you could copy the lines below into a
Notepad document, save as UpdateARP.reg and then double-click to delete
the key. Copy everything between the dotted lines, including the blank
line at the end (that's important) and be sure to select "All File
Types" in the Save As dialog. You'd need to reboot afterwards, then try
Add/Remove again.

-------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Management\ARPCache]

------------------------

3. Run a system file check. Open a Command window and at the prompt
type: sfc /scannow <enter>.

Please do let us know how you get on

 

[Nightowl]

Just an update. I have tried pretty much everything but nothing seems to be
working. So finally (unplanned though, I was explaining to my cousin on how
repair works) I ran windows repair and for some good / bad reasons it did
work. I do thank you for your time, help and advices. I think this is the
least I can do to thank you to let you know is the results. Once again, I
sure appreciate your time and help.

Thanks, Danial, it's always good to know the ending of a story
Sorry you had to do the repair install but glad to hear everything is
okay now. I very much appreciate your thanks; only sorry I couldn't find
an answer for you.