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 cancelled
If 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 setup
Resolution
Perform the following steps to remove the desired application:
-
Rename the C:\Program folder.
-
Click the Start button, point to Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Add/Remove Programs.
-
Click the application you want to remove, and then click Remove.
-
Click OK.
-
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.
