Registry scrubber?

[Grey]

XP Pro Sp1,

A while ago, I had a serious virus infection. My IE was messed up with all
sorts of BHO, diallers and everything else.
I managed to manually remove most of them, but the damage was not worth the
hassle, so I wiped the HD and restored from a two-week old backup.

All is well except for two programs which constantly give me grief. MyMp3Pro
v5 and Pinnacle Studio 9 seriously malfunction in that they simply do not
work. I uninstall the progs, use Norton's SystemWorks to clean up the
registry as far as it can and reinstall to no avail.

Some forums have told me these progs are obviously leaving bits of
themselves in the registry and causing the malfunction. Is there a way to
scrub off all these entries safely? I don't want to do it in regedit as it
seems a bit dangerous and some entries have cryptic names which may impact
on other programs.

So I'm looking for some ultimate uninstaller. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Graham

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

System Mechanic is a great utility program.
You can try it free for 30 days and the trial is fully functional.
http://www.iolo.com/sm/index.cfm

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxp/choose.mspx

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

:

| XP Pro Sp1,
|
| A while ago, I had a serious virus infection. My IE was messed up with all
| sorts of BHO, diallers and everything else.
| I managed to manually remove most of them, but the damage was not worth the
| hassle, so I wiped the HD and restored from a two-week old backup.
|
| All is well except for two programs which constantly give me grief. MyMp3Pro
| v5 and Pinnacle Studio 9 seriously malfunction in that they simply do not
| work. I uninstall the progs, use Norton's SystemWorks to clean up the
| registry as far as it can and reinstall to no avail.
|
| Some forums have told me these progs are obviously leaving bits of
| themselves in the registry and causing the malfunction. Is there a way to
| scrub off all these entries safely? I don't want to do it in regedit as it
| seems a bit dangerous and some entries have cryptic names which may impact
| on other programs.
|
| So I'm looking for some ultimate uninstaller. Any ideas?
|
| Thanks,
|
| Graham

 

[Tony Lisanti]

Well, worst case, flush the whole system and start over again.

 

[Rock]

XP Pro Sp1,

A while ago, I had a serious virus infection. My IE was messed up with all
sorts of BHO, diallers and everything else.
I managed to manually remove most of them, but the damage was not worth the
hassle, so I wiped the HD and restored from a two-week old backup.

All is well except for two programs which constantly give me grief. MyMp3Pro
v5 and Pinnacle Studio 9 seriously malfunction in that they simply do not
work. I uninstall the progs, use Norton's SystemWorks to clean up the
registry as far as it can and reinstall to no avail.

Some forums have told me these progs are obviously leaving bits of
themselves in the registry and causing the malfunction. Is there a way to
scrub off all these entries safely? I don't want to do it in regedit as it
seems a bit dangerous and some entries have cryptic names which may impact
on other programs.

So I'm looking for some ultimate uninstaller. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Graham

Norton System Works could also be an underlying cause for system problems.

 

[George Hester]

I'm sure it is. In fact I know it is. The registry regedit is not all that
dangerous if you just search on the right thing. Let's take Pinnnacle for
example. You uninstall it although you know not everything was removed for
when you re-install it some of your customization is still there. A sure
sign of a poor uninstaller. That will happen with Norton's products too and
fact is once Norton stuff is installed it can NEVER be removed. No matter
what anyone tells you.

Now getting back to Pinnacle. First you want to find the folder it installs
itself in. Say C:\Program Files\Pinnacle but you need to be sure about
that. Most programs install files in one or two places. Either the
application's folder as above or C:\Windows\system32. If it installs in
other folders as do Adobe products then your work is harder but Adobe
products have pretty good uninstallers but not perfect.

So in the registry to make sure we got rid of hide and hair of Pinnacle we
are going to search on a couple of things. Namely Pinn and we are going to
search on \Pinnacle if that is the name of the folder it installs in in
C:\Program Files.

So all we are left with is getting its files out of system32. This is a
little harder. But you should get some info from the registry from above.
Remember a file name in there with no absolute path means the file is in
your path such as in C:\Windows\system32. Make sure you inspect and back up
EVERYTHING you remove from the registry with regedit. HTH.