Symptoms
After you create a folder called C:\Program, if you then go to Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs, and select an installed program to remove or update, you get the following error message:
An error occurred while trying to remove "program_name"
Uninstallation has been cancelledIf you rename the folder called Program to, for example, Program2, you see the following message:
This change may impact one or more registered programs. Do you want to continue?
Cause
In the registry under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall \... any programs whose uninstall string value starts with C:\Progra~1 or "C:\Program Files\..." will fail to be removed if a C:\Program folder exists. These examples will fail: UninstallString:reg_sz:c:\Program Files\My_program\setup setup UninstallString:reg_sz:"c:\Program Files\My_program\setup" setup UninstallString:reg_sz:c:\Progra~1\My_program\setup setupResolution
Perform the following steps to remove the desired application:
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Rename the C:\Program folder.
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Click the Start button, point to Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Add/Remove Programs.
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Click the application you want to remove, and then click Remove.
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Click OK.
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Rename the folder in step 1 back to its original name.
Status
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT version 4.0. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.