Answer Line: Remove Apps That Don't Uninstall Themselves

What can you do when you can't find uninstall utilities for programs you want to uninstall?

Elizabeth Saraceno, Cortland, New York

I can't guarantee that these instructions will wipe out every trace of every program you want to remove from your PC--I'm cautious and delete only the files I'm sure aren't necessary--but in most cases they'll get almost all of them.

Find the program path and file name. Right-click the program's shortcut on your Start menu and select Properties. Everything in the Target field to the last backslash is the program's path, and everything after that backslash is its file name. For instance, if the Target field says 'C:\My Programs\Bug Multiplier\Bug.exe', the path is C:\My Programs\Bug Multiplier, and the program file name is Bug.exe. Keep the Properties box open. You'll need to refer to the path and file name throughout.

Make sure nothing from the program loads automatically. Select Start, Run, type msconfig, and press Enter (if you get an error message rather than a program, see " Msconfig for Windows 2000 and 95." Click the Startup tab. In the Name or Startup Items column, look for anything related to the program that you want to uninstall. In the Command column, look for anything resembling the program path. Uncheck all the items that meet either criterion, then click OK.

Eliminate associations. In Windows Explorer, select View, Folder Options ( Tools, Folder Options in Windows 98) and click the File Types tab. Look for any file types that are associated with the program you want to uninstall. When you find one, you have two options. If you'd like to associate the file type with another program, click Change and select the other program; otherwise click Delete, then Yes. Click Close when you're done.

Clean the Registry. Select Start, Run, type regedit, and press Enter. In the left pane of the Registry Editor, navigate to the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications. Click the plus sign next to this key, then right-click the subkey matching your program's file name. Select Delete, then Yes.

Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software and look for a subkey named for the vendor of the program. Click the plus sign by the vendor name to view the subkeys beneath it. If you see subkeys for programs you wish to keep, delete only the subkey for the program you're uninstalling. Otherwise, delete the vendor key entirely. Do the same in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE key.

Press Home to return to the top of the Registry Editor's left pane, with My Computer selected. Press Ctrl-F to open the Find dialog box. Enter the program path in the 'Find what' field, make sure all of the options under 'Look at' are checked, and click Next or Find Next, depending on your version of Windows. If a match turns up, delete the key containing it, then press F3 to search again. When it's done, close the Registry Editor. Finally, delete the program's folder and shortcuts.

Change Your Player

I've got two media players on my system, Winamp and Windows Media Player. How do I control which program launches when I put in an audio CD or double-click an MP3 file?

Bruce Kamikubo, Torrance, California

You can use Windows Explorer's Open With dialog box to change the player in which your audio files open automatically, but a better approach is to set the file associations in your media players' Preferences menus. To change your media file associations in Windows Explorer, right-click the file (Shift-right-click in Windows 98) and choose Open With. Select the application you want the file type to be associated with, check Always use this program to open this type of file (the exact wording varies based on your version of Windows), and click OK. Note that if you take the Windows Explorer route, you have to change both the Audio CD and the CD Audio settings to reset your CD audio player's file associations.

Alternatively, you can go right to the source: your media players' settings. These programs sometimes don't want to give up their file associations, so I recommend that you first go into the current default program and deselect the file type whose association you're changing, then go into your desired default program to select that file type. Here's how to reset associations in the current versions of four popular players.

RealOne Player: Select Tools, Preferences. Click Media Types in the left pane, and check the file types you want RealOne Player to play by default from the list on the right (uncheck the file types you don't want RealOne to play). For MP3 files, check or uncheck MP3 Audio. For CDs, change both Audio CD Playback and CD Audio.

Windows Media Player 8: Select Tools, Options. Click the File Types tab. For MP3s, the option you should check or uncheck is MP3 Format Sound. For CDs, it's CD Audio Track. (See FIGURE 1.)

Winamp: Press Ctrl-P. In the left panel, click File Types. In the 'Associated extensions' list, select or deselect the file types whose associations you want to change. For CDs, you need to select or deselect CDA, and also check or uncheck the Associate with audio CDs option. Click Close.

QuickTime: This player doesn't support CD audio, nor does it give up MP3 file associations easily. To force the issue, open Control Panel and double-click the QuickTime icon. In the QuickTime Settings dialog box, select File Type Associations from the drop-down menu. Uncheck Notify me if other applications modify these viewer associations and close the window. Then assign the file-association default in your desired player.

To return the MP3 association to QuickTime, open the QuickTime Settings dialog box as described above, select File Type Associations, and check the Internet file types category so that it's a full, black-on-white check mark (it will probably be grayed out when you open the window). Close the window.

More on Blocked Pages

Reader Donald Bregman responded to May's "Why Won't That Web Page Open?" tip with another possible fix for recalcitrant Web pages. A file in your Windows folder called 'hosts' (no extension) may have an incorrect IP address for the page. To find out, open Windows Explorer, select your C:\Windows folder, and look in the right pane for a hosts file. If you can't find it in your Windows folder, this isn't your problem. If you do find a hosts file, open it in Notepad and look for a line referring to the page that's giving you trouble. If it's there, enter # at the beginning of the line. Save and exit the file.

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