windows question

I want to uninstall a program so I went into Control Panel/add remove programs and nothing comes up on the list Any hep out dere???

 

did you wait long enough? on my system the ARP applet says "please wait while the list is being populated" for quite a while (5-6seconds) so be patient if you see that text.
if you don't see "please wait..." but there are really no entries you may have a very clean system and the app you want to remove is unremovable on an unmodified windows. IIRC, outlook express and some other apps are like that ie they don't show up in the list. you have to go into a INF file somewhere in windows directory and change some options for them to show on the list. i don't remember the details but google is your friend.

 

Alot of times if it doesn't show in the remove programs you can just delete the folder and if you know what your doing go into the registry and remove the entries. Most people that have used Norton Utilities know how to do this because at sometime they've had to do it.

 

What program is it?

 

There should be at least a few items in the list.
If this is the first time that you are looking at the add\remove programs, then it could take 30 seconds depending on how many programs that you have installed. It has to create the list the first time including Windows Hotfixes\Security patches, etc..
As Kalm stated, look for the "please wait while the list is being populated" and go from there.

 

This will also occur if there is a corrupt regestry entry in the add/remove section of the registry

As others have noted, first load add/remove and take a walk, then come back and see if the list is there.

If not, the registry key is

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

How I usually do it is to export the entire key, then remove 5 subkeys at a time until the add/remove list shows up in control panel...then, having isolated the problem group, import the earlier exported file, then remove subkeys one at a time (from those five) until the list shows.

Then import one last time, then remove that single problem sub key

 

actually a binary search would be faster than removing 5 at a time. ie remove the first half of the entries and try, if list ok, add first half of second group so on and so forth. ie divide (in the middle) and conquer.

 

you are correct, it would be quicker