Add/remove programs disappeared

Nothing shows up when I click on add/remove programs. When I click on the icon on my desktop, it opens and works. I tried doing a system restore but nothing changed. Help…

Hi ems88.

Sorry, but I don't understand all of your question. From what you said, when you open Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel, it's empty. That part I understand. What I don't understand is what you mean by When I click on the icon on my desktop, it opens and works. What Icon, what is it a link to?

Try re-registering the Add or Remove Programs applet.

Click on Start then Run
Type regsvr32 appwiz.cpl and press Enter

See if that fixes it for you.

Ztruker, Sorry, I meant to say that all the programs that used to be listed in add/remove programs still work when I click on it. For example, the iTunes icon is still there on my desktop, I can open it and it works and it should be in add/remove but nothing is listed in my add/remove programs. I just tried what you suggested and it doesn't work. I think this happened after I tried a cleaner to get rid of one of my antivirus programs and something happened to the registry.

Is the Add or Remove Programs widow truly empty or is there just a lot of blank space. In other words, can you scroll down and finally see your installed programs? If yes, look at the posts here: http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2097067.php

I found one post where they used a Shareware program called X-Setup Pro to resolve the Add or Remove Windows problem. It said it was free to home users, but since then it has become Shareware which means you can try it for 30 days, buy it if you like it or delete it if not. I just installed it to look at it and it might be worth trying it.

Download from here: http://www.x-setup.net/home.asp?lang=EN

Once it starts, click on Classic, then expand Software Installation.
Expand Add or Remove Programs and click on Add or Remove Programs Options.
On the right side, click the Apply changes button.
Close all X-Setup Pro windows and reboot, see if that fixed your problem.

If not, please give Revo Uninstaller a try, see if it shows you all your installed software.

Yes, the add/remove program list is definitely empty. I tried the x-setup pro but it didn't fix the problem. The Revo Uninstaller does show all the installed software on my computer.

You can use Revo Uninstaller for any uninstalls you need to do for now until we get A/R Progs fixed.

Before we continue, please make a full backup of your registry following the directions here: How to backup and restore Windows XP registry using ERUNT

Next, create a .reg file of the following red text by selecting only the red text, then opening Notepad and pasting the data there. Save it to your Desktop as:

"InProcServer32.reg"

with the double quotes, exactly as I show above. Now right click on InProcServer32.reg and select Merge. Click OK .

Now try A/R Progs. If still NG, reboot and try it again.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{352EC2B7-8B9A-11D1-B8AE-006008059382}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,61,00,70,00,\
70,00,77,00,69,00,7a,00,2e,00,63,00,70,00,6c,00,00,00
"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

posted wrong thread …sorry

I'm having a problem completely removing Avira antivir. I ran Revo uninstaller, tried to uninstall Avira but a message came up during the uninstallation process that said "Setup could not determine the feature control file or was not able to read it correctly." But Avira no longer shows up when I open Revo. When I try to reinstall Avira, it says I need to completely uninstall it first. Is there another way to completely remove it? I read that I could manually remove it, but I don't feel too confident doing this.

Try the Avira Removal Tool

I used the removal tool and my computer came up clean but I want to uninstall Avira completely so I can reinstall it. My current version isn't working.

You did remove it completely so you should now be able to install the latest version. Or am I missing something?

Yes, according to Revo, it is uninstalled. When I try to reinstall Avira, a message comes up saying "Setup has detected an already installed version of Avira AntiVir Personal-Free Antivirus. Please uninstall this version before starting setup again"…so it's not uninstalled.

So you used the Avira Removal Tool, correct? If so then there must be some registry entries left that it didn't remove.

Please, before doing anything else, install and run ERUNT as I mentioned earlier.

Once that's done, open the Registry Editor (Start / Run type regedit and press Enter).

Press the F3 key then search for avira. Delete all instances found. Repeat for antivir.

Alternatively, download and install RegSeeker and use it's Find in registry option to locate avira and antivir. Delete all found. An advantage to using RegSeeker is it will bakup the entries before deleting them so you will have double backup redundancy

Reboot and try to install the latest Avira.

THANK YOU! I was able to install Avira. I've backed up my registry and followed all the steps you listed, but add/remove is still not there.

Open up the start menu, click on run and then type in cmd to open up the command line. Type in sfc /scannnow. You might be prompted for your windows disk so have it handy. If that doesn't work I suggest that you start a new thread here.