Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Another PC challenged question – Uninstaller

That was why I asked the original question. An easy way to figure out of all or part of the program is on the removable drive is to simply unplug it.

If it is just an autorun that starts up when you try to access the removable drive, the solution is simple: reformat the drive.

It sounds like there is more to it than that though. ie: Mike ran an installer that installed something on his c drive.

Sure. It's free. Format C: That's what I do, anyway.



Really? WD is my favorite brand for HD's as I have historically had the least amount of failures with them. I have a couple of their external USB drives and I've never had a problem like that. Which model is it that's doing this? I want to make sure I avoid it! I hate third-party, system-tray-clogging bloatware.

But if you wanted actual advice.....

If you can't find a way to totally uninstall it, you can still tell Windows not to run it at boot. Go to Start->Run. Type 'msconfig' (no quotes). If you look at the Startup tab, that's a list of everything your system starts when it boots. It can be very informative as to what bloat-ware has been installed on your system, whether you knew about it or not. You can use that list to track down where the applets are that are starting, or you can just disable their startup by unchecking the box.

But do be careful with msconfig, you can mess up your system if you start tinkering with things. You're mostly safe if you just stay on the 'Startup' tab. Do not mess with System.ini, Win.ini or Boot.ini unless you know what you're doing.

Remember, "with great power comes great responsibility".

Mike, if you re-run The Acronis installer it might present you with a Remove/Uninstall option.

Peter, that scares me.... I don't know what I'm doing, so I'll just have to wait for Peter or Ken to show up on my doorstet for that fix....

The WD drive is the My Book Home Edition. USB/Firewire/eSATA. I bought it as Costco. The software is definately on my C: as the WD drive is disconnected.

I had some luck with Windows Defender. I was able to turn it off during start up, but I still can't find it do uninstall it.

If you're up for it, I can use remote assistance software to take control of your PC and fix it from my house this evening (or another convenient day). It's called TeamViewer. It's free and works like a charm.

Let me know via PM.

If it's trial ware, try Decrapifier. It hunts down this kind of thing and wipes it (no pun intended....... Well, maybe a little).

Also, try a google. Others have likely had and asolved the issue.

AL the software apps mentioned here will do a good job. I try to use them but lately, I find I'm lazy and just use the control panel Add/Remove feature. This doesn't always clean up 100% of the registry settings and stuff but I find that even when I uninstall properly, run defrag now and then, etc... I still end up reformatting my system drive every year (two max) because the ultimate cleanup and fresh reinstall significantly re-improves my PCs performance. Usually, you don't even realize how cluttered and slow it has gotten until you do a format and rebuild. All my data is kept on separate hard drives (and backed up) so the format doesn't give me the cold sweats.

Thank for the offer Peter. The IT folks at work do that every now and again. It really freaks me out for some reason. I supose is has something to do with the profound effect that movie "The Net" had on my years ago. Not sure if I could handle it for my personnal PC....

I'll try one of the mentioned removal tools first.

WOW! Somebody else who is hip to TeamViewer. I use it to help out my friends, which is really humorous cuz I don't really know that much about fixing computers. I do however know more than my friends.

I LOVE this program! It proved extremely difficult to help folks over the phone without the benefit of being able to see their computer screen and thus know exactly what they were doing. This program has literally saved my sanity (and a number of friendships).

Peter, when I have things happen on my computer that I can't figure out, you may be hearing from me.

Yeah!

I say we let Peter provide tech support to ALL of us!