BleepingComputer.com: Removing Unwanted Programs

I have been cleaning up my daughter's new Sony Vaio laptop. It came with a lot of junk she doesn't really need and it seemed like a good idea.

The first program to go was "Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro - English, Francais, Deutsch" or so I thought. What a headache!!!! I opened Control Panel and using Vista's "Uninstall" started the process. It took 30 - 45 min for "Validating installation" to decide what to do and then eventually got hung up. I couldn't end the task using the Windows Task Manager and since Vista doesn't allow for shut downs using the Task Manager had to remove the battery to shut everything down. My husband couldn't stand it anymore so he went in and started deleting files. We have it removed now except for what is in the registry. How do I safely remove anything related to Adobe Acrobat from the registry? I'm not sure if the problem was Vista or Adobe Acrobat.

I was able to successfully remove QuickBook Simple Start Free Started Edition using Vista's Uninstall. It took much longer then I thought it should of but at least it got the job done.

Thank you for any thoughts!

You can use the File...New Task (Run) option - then type in "shutdown -/t 0" (without the quotes) and it will immediately force a shutdown.

hi hillster,, i cant understand why its takeing so long to del something,,,, have you done a virus & spyware scan just incase you have something & its doing its thing while your trying to delete something,,,,,,, damn, to many something's there i think,,,,,lol
also you could run a cleaner after you have deleted SOMETHING to pick up the bits & pieces that it might off missed,,,, i use ccleaner which is good, but look at the settings very clearly befor use,,, uncheck the clean recycle bin so you can empty that your self,, there might be stuff you changed your mind about in there. When you use the scan for issues tab i use to make a restor point and save a backup which ccleaner ask's you to do. This tool cleans issues in your registry,, so i always use caution

http://www.ccleaner.com/

here's the link to it,,,, goodluck

Hello Hillster,

You should not use a Registry Cleaner for the sole purpose of "picking up the bits and pieces" after you deleted something.
Registry cleaners are extremely powerful applications.
There are a number of them available and some are more safe than others.
Keep in mind that no two registry cleaners work entirely the way. Each vendor uses different criteria as to what constitutes a "bad" entry.
One cleaner may find entries on your system that will not cause a problem when removed, another may not find the same entries, and still another may want to remove entries required for a program to work.
Unless you have a particular problem that requires a registry edit to correct it, I would suggest you leave the registry alone. Using registry cleaning tools unnecessarily or incorrectly can have disastrous effects on your operating system such as preventing it from ever starting again.

My peers have advised, that when Vista has loaded Adobe Acrobat as part of it's package, any updating of Vista may try to repair, replace or update the Adobe suite.

You can type this at the command prompt in order to remove Acrobat Reader 8.0 silently:

msiexec /x {AC76BA86-7AD7-1033-7B44-A80000000002} /qn

From this link: http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewConten...ternalId=333237

hi,,, oviously reg cleaners do a bit more than " pick up the bits & pieces " i was crediting the poster with the smarts to read up on the program, i also recomended 1 that i have been using on a xp machine for 3 ish years without a problem & is one of the most wideley used & most trusted Reg Cleaners ,,, i know all machines & os's are differant but i also use ccleaner on 2 vista home prem machines without a problem,,, i also advised the poster to err on the side of caution whils using and getting use to the program, and back up befor cleaning so you can restor if something important has been removed,,, and also create restor points befor use. There are a lot of people in the for & against bracket's for reg cleaners, now the poster has an opinion from both sides of the coin, so may chose freely what to do. one more point is that TMacK is totally right about messing with the reg on all machines, and yes i was a bit glib with the remark about picking up the bits & pieces, as this gives a faulse impression to the dangers of using a reg cleaner, this is why i use one thats tryed & trusted & am always carefull with its use and appoligise for any misleading impressions given in my previous post & allways read up on something befor you use it or not..
good luck

Quote

Slightly off topic here - whenever I try to uninstall a program in VISTA that uses Windows Installer (.msi files) it takes a very long time for the process to complete. I have tried this with programs like Dell Support software, old versions of Adobe, Quicktime, Nero, Roxio, etc. and depending on the size of the installation it can take as long as 30 to 45 minutes!!

What takes 30 minutes to uninstall in Vista takes no more than about 2 to 3 minutes in XP. What's up with that?!!

My computer runs awesome on Vista and is very fast but .msi uninstallations go at a snail's pace. Any thoughts to this?

Thanks.

Hi Hillster,

I've had a similar problem and occasionally even with something as simple as deleting shortcuts from the start menu. Each time it involves the miserable UAC requiring permission, although it too gets hung up and doesn't display a visible box.

The way I handle this is to use Alt-Ctrl-Del to get into the task manager (the only way under those circumstances), click on the process that's hanging, and finally up pops the box asking for permission. Once I grant it, the rest of the uninstall or deletion moves along very nicely.

I hope that this "lag" will be corrected in Service Pack 1 for Vista. I had installed TeraCopy (along with some tweaks from the internet) and it seems to have helped out some. TeraCopy is freeware from here: http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.asp