Delete item from Add/Remove Programs menu??

[Willard]

Is there a way to delete an item from the Add/Remove Programs menu, when
all files of the KB* hotfix are no longer on the computer??
Willard

 

[John John]

They're in the registry at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

You can delete the entries for the non existant items.

John

 

[Willard]

That gives (00170409-78E1-11D2-860F-006097G998E7} etc. ????
No reference to the KB* hotfix. ???

Willard

 

[John John]

Expand the Uninstall key and scroll down. Look carefully, that is where
they are along with all your other applications.

John

 

[NewScience]

If you delete that entry, you will leave remnants throughout the registry in
support of that Uninstall key.
Use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility instead:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

 

[John John]

I don't think that the Installer Cleanup Utility will do much of
anything to remove KB Hotfix items from the Add/Remove Programs list.

John

 

[NewScience]

It will if they were installed with an installer package.

However, you still have to clean out the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Hotfix key
of the KB* entry you are deleting under Uninstall.

 

[John John]

Hotfixes are not installed with Windows Installer, they are (mostly)
installed with hotfix.exe. The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility has
nothing to do with hotfixes.

Why would you want to remove the information at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\HotFix ?

That contains information about the hotfixes that are installed on your
computer and unless you want to remove or reinstall the hotfixes you
shouldn't remove these. Information about installed hotfixes are also
in other registry locations. The original poster wants to remove the
long list of entries in the Add/Remove Programs list. He doesn't want
to uninstall the hotfixes he just wants them out of the appwiz tool. To
remove these he only has to remove the registry entries at the Uninstall
key, the Installer CleanUp utility is of no use for this purpose and he
shouldn't touch the registry entries at other locations.

John

 

[NewScience]

The progonal question was:

Is there a way to delete an item from the Add/Remove Programs menu, when
all files of the KB* hotfix are no longer on the computer??

If all files of the KB* hotfix are no longer on the computer, removing the
Uninstall entry removes the entry from the Add/Remove Programs list but does
not remove the Hotfix entry ... which should not be there if the HotFix was
removed.

I am assuming that the OP has removed the Hotfix and is trying to get the
Add/Remove Programs list to be in sync with the system.

Plus, if I'm not mistaken SVCHOST.EXE uses the HotFix key to determine what
has been installed or not installed when it takes the system snapshot.

 

[John John]

I'm 99% sure that the OP means that the $NtUninstallKBnnnnnn$ folders
were removed and that he wants the corresponding entries deleted from
appwiz. Why would he have removed all the hotfixes and if he did how
would he have removed them? If with the appwiz tool then there would be
no entries left in there, the uninstall routine would have removed the
entries there.

What does svchost have to do with any of this? Svchost is just a host
process that runs a bunch of different services from dll's. Svchost
reads the services keys in the registry to determine which services it
should load. It has nothing to do with hotfixes unless some of the
installed hotfixes start service types that would run under the generic
host service, that is the only extend to which the two would have any
interaction. If I'm not mistaken the list of installed hotfixes (when
you visit Windows Updates) is read from the Windows Update engine's
security catlog files.

John

 

[Willard]

Thanks John John, and NewScience for the discussion..

I searched for Files&Folders to see if : KB911567 was on the computer,
then I went to Start>Run>regedit.exe>Find: KB911567 & deleted it; which
removed it from the Add/Remove menu..

Willard

 

[NewScience]

When was the last time you monitored SVCHOST with FileMon and RegMon to see
what is going on when snapshotting the system?

 

[John John]

What does that have to do with hotfixes and removing entries in the
appwiz tool?

John