Uninstall Useless Windows Components

So many useless program installed in your PC  may slow down your computer. You should uninstall those to get rid from them. Well, it is quite easy to uninstall any program from the Add/Remove Program option under Control Panel.But if the the program is not present in the List under Add/Remove Program then how you will uninstall them?

What happens when you install a program in your computer? When a program is installed in Windows XP then it add some entries in registry like ‘Display name’ ‘Display Icon’ ‘Publisher’ etc.But there resides one important entry named UninstallString.This string holds the uninstall process execution path. This UninstallString can play the key roll for uninstalling a program.

Case A:
How to uninstall the program which are not present in the Add/Remove Program list?
Here you won’t have to edit registry.We shall just use the information from the registry.

What you have to do?

• Go to Start > Run, then type “regedit” and press Enter.
• Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\currentversion\Uninstall\

• Expand Uninstall by the + sign.
• Find out the program that you want to uninstall and click on it.
• On the right panel you should see the entry named UninstallString and double click on it.
• A pop up window named Edit String will appear. Now copy the string under Value data.

Open the command prompt and paste the string that you copied and heat enter to execute it.The uninstall window will pop up.Follow the  un-installation wizard.

Case B:

There are some widows component’s that you still can’t uninstall.They appears in neither the Add/Remove program list nor in the registry.Then how can you uninstall them if you wish?You can uninstall them from the Windows Component list.But here are many Windows utilities that are not shown in the Windows component list. As example you can’t uninstall Windows Messenger, WordPad or similar components in simple.But there is a catch.XP has a setup information file sysoc.inf where XP controls which program will appear in the Windows Component List.You can make them visible in the Windows Component List editing that file.

How to uninstall the program by editing sysoc.inf

sysoc.inf file is generally located in C:>Windows>Inf folder.

• Find out the sysoc.inf file and and take a backup so that you can revert to it if any problem arises.
• Open the file with Notepad.You will see like this
• Now in some line there is embedded a word HIDE(or hide) which indicates that the program is invisible in the Windows Component List.
• As example: Pinball=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,pinball.inf,HIDE,7 .

This indicates that the game Pinball is invisible in the Windows Component list.
• Just delete the word HIDE and save the file.The line will be like this:

Pinball=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,pinball.inf,7

• Now the Pinball entry will appear in the Windows Component List.And then you can perform the uninstall process in the Windows Component wizard.

But you should understand the which code represents which Program.Here is some list of codes with their corresponding Program.

AccessOpt
Accessibility Wizard

CommApps
Communications components, including Chat, Hyperterminal, and Phone Dialer

AutoUpdate
Windows Automatic Update

MultiM
Multimedia components, including Media Player, Volume Control, and Sound Recorder

TerminalServer
Terminal Server

dtc
Distributed Transaction Coordinator

MSWordPad
WordPad

msmsgs
Windows Messenger

dom
COM+

WBEM
Windows Management Instrumentation

Pinball
Pinball game

So you can make visible the programs you need to uninstall editing the sysoc.inf file and then uninstall it from the Windows Component Wizard.

It is not guaranteed that all the program will be permitted to uninstall.You still may not uninstall some Windows Component.

Any way I think this process will help you to uninstall some Windows Component that occurs some disk space and slow downs your System Performance.

If you know any other process then please share with us.