Uninstalling Programs not in Windows Features or Programs & Featur

[Guest]

I'm running Windows Vista Home Basic on a Compaq Presario laptop. (Well, it
was cheap.)

There are several programs I want to remove:

Online Services (Which expands to Easy Internet Services and a list of
online services in the US),

Windows Calendar, Windows Contacts, and Windows Mail (which I don't need
because I have Office Pro installed), and

Windows Photo Gallery.

They are not listed in Programs and Features or in Windows Features, but
they show up in the Start Menu.

HP told me I could just delete the exe files, but I find that difficult to
believe because just deleting them would leave the Registry unchanged.

Is there a way of removing these programs without messing up the Registry?

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Those are Windows Vista system files & folders and are integrated.
They cannot be removed.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User

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

in message I'm running Windows Vista Home Basic on a Compaq Presario laptop. (Well, it
was cheap.)

There are several programs I want to remove:

Online Services (Which expands to Easy Internet Services and a list of
online services in the US),

Windows Calendar, Windows Contacts, and Windows Mail (which I don't need
because I have Office Pro installed), and

Windows Photo Gallery.

They are not listed in Programs and Features or in Windows Features, but
they show up in the Start Menu.

HP told me I could just delete the exe files, but I find that difficult to
believe because just deleting them would leave the Registry unchanged.

Is there a way of removing these programs without messing up the Registry?

 

[Guest]

Every time I use Vista it becomes more obvious: Microsoft did not improve
the operating system, they merely changed it. And as is so often the case
change for the sake of change is counterproductive.

The same is true of Office 2007.

Barney

 

[Andrew McLaren]

There are several programs I want to remove:
Is there a way of removing these programs without messing up the Registry?

Hi Barney

Do you want to totally remove these applications? Or just remove them from
the Start Menu?

It is quite easy to remove them from the Start Menu - just right-click on
the item, and choose "Delete" from the context menu. If you get a "Please
confirm" dialogue, just press Continue.

Contacts, Photo Gallery etc are part of the system, they are quite deeply
spliced into Windows. You can probably remove them totally with some deep
hacking, but I don't recommend it. If you get them off the Start Menu, they
can live unobtrusively in the background.

Hope it helps,

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Why did you purchase Windows Vista and Office 2007?

 

[Guest]

Hi Jupiter,

I had heard bad things about Vista, and I planned to wait until Microsoft
issued a service pack before getting a new computer. But I needed a laptop
and couldn’t find one with XP on it, because they all had Vista. So I got
Vista.

But I doubt that Microsoft will fix a lot of the things I find obnoxious
about Vista. I don’t think they’ll change the silly folders that look as
though they’ll spill their contents. I doubt that they’ll fix the view you
get when you open Windows Explorer, even though the Vista version is awkward
and harder to use. I hope, but I’m skeptical about the prospects that
they’ll fix the design mistakes that make it nearly impossible to share files
and printers between computers running Vista and computers running XP on a
wireless network. I’m certain they won’t change things to allow me to remove
programs like the ones I listed in my first post from my system, where they
use up disk space.

Vista is certainly different from XP, but it is certainly not better.

I didn’t want Office 2007, either, but I needed it for compatibility
reasons. When I started using it I found, again, change for the sake of
change. Outlook and Word are harder to use, with a more complex menu system
that hides many of the functions I used to use.

This is hardly the place for a technical evaluation of Vista and Office
2007, and I must admit that I’m not qualified to provide one anyway. I’m
simply a user who is confronted with change that accomplishes nothing and
makes my life more difficult.

I wish my laptop were running XP. I wish I didn’t need to read and create
files with a docx extension. (“docx,†by the way is not included in the
Office 2007 dictionary, so gives you an error if you use it.)

Have I answered your question?

Barney

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Dell still sells laptops with windows XP, here is one:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/latit_d430?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04
Other OEMs probably also Windows XP available.
Windows XP should be available somewhere preinstalled at least until
January 2008.

Windows Vista has a few Reliability packs not yet widely available
that when released may address some of your concerns.
Some things relating more to personal preference are less likely to be
changed.

The Windows Vista Service Pack is rumored to be available early next
year coinciding with the release of Windows Server 2008.

--
Jupiter Jones [MVP]
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar
http://www.dts-l.org