Ok.. I looked around and tried to remember what happend with WDS on XP.
I can assure you there are thousands of posts about this, now a few on
MSDN... lol
infact its a jungle out there about this issue. See these 2 links
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=u...arch&hl=en&sa=N&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&tab=wg
http://www.google.com/search?q=unin...arch&hl=en&sa=N&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&tab=gw
after doing updates I usually delete the
%systemroot%\$NtUninstallKBXXXXXXX
because I never intend to uninstall an update...
WDS however was one of those...
With that deleted and with the system restore point purged I could not
uninstall it.
I could not install the same desktop search again either beacuse it said it
was already installed...
I tried various methods to extract the installer and place the files
manually in the correct location to do the install.
After several hours of search, reading numerous problems by other people.. I
got so frustrated that I said I would format. Now I am a tech and I find it
a personal challenge when something doesnt work.. I insist until I find the
solution...and I find it almost always! I dont like the computer
doing "whatever it wants"... but in this case I was so frustrated I
formated.. and this was
a 1 year instalation of windows... I did not find an "uninstaller" on the
internet, and If I cant find it, no simple user can...
You may say that I was dumb to delete the kb folders... well dont rush into
that conclusion... I had no way of knowing that
an application for searching would be seen as an update. Also there are
programs that clean up the pc like ccleaner and
some others that delete these files.... So I am sure that more people would
have the same problem...
Why not make it a NORMAL program that installs in a normal folder along with
all the files needed to uninstall it?
Why not make it possible to switch from the WDS to the old way of searching?
Let me tell you why I didnt like WDS
It was taking too much time to index, and I had no way to search using the
old interface of XP.... and I couldnt remove WDS either...
I tried to search after a couple of hours and I had no results (because it
was still indexing). But I could not use the normal search either.
Now listen... with HDD getting to the terrabyte size the indexing of files
will take longer and longer... if you have WDS on a new computer
that you slowly add files its ok... if you install WDS on a computer like
mine that has 800 GB of files.... well indexing is too slow and will take
several days.. and during that time I will not be able to search correctly.
I can tell you feeling that you have no control over something is scary if
you are a tech... lol
anyway.. I hope the above information will give you an insight to what was
going on... and also please understand, that if I
was having problems, I am sure that simple users will also be having
problems...
Simplicity is the best way to do it... perhaps a start up menu entry with
options to uninstall it, and or make it the default search (or not)
would be best.... I understand the intent of MS to make it a hidden service
working in the background and it to be transparent to the user..
however.. when things go wrong, this is dangerous..
Thanks again... I read your other comments and have saved that info for the
future...