Removing invalid entries from Add or Remove Programs

Removing invalid entries from Add or Remove Programs

Sometimes when you uninstall a program, corresponding entry in the Add or Remove Programs listing may not be removed. This may be due to incomplete uninstall or poorly designed uninstaller itself. To manually remove the orphaned entries from the Add or Remove Programs applet, follow these steps:

Click Start, Run and type regedit.exe
Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall

Backup the branch to a file
Note: Each subkey represents a program that you’ve installed. To determine which program that each key represents, click the key, and then view the DisplayName value data in the right pane

Select the subkey that you want to delete
Right-click on the subkey and choose Delete
Close Registry Editor