Removing program problem

[JiF][AARP]Tissueman · Sat May 19, 2007 1:35 pm

I have a problem. Actually, I have two problems. Seriously, I have many problems, but I'm only going to mention one and ask for help for another here.

I've been buying PC's on about a three year cycle to keep up with the latest game I've wanted to play. My current PC is about 3 years old, but so far it is holding up well. My 6 year old PC is in the basement. I use it for my 'recording studio'. My 9 year old PC is the one my wife uses. It came with a 6 gig HD that died and was replaced by Dell under warranty with a 10 gig hard drive. Currently, I only have about 1 gig of free space on that HD on a good day. I've taken everything off that doesn't need to be there, but I have to constantly do a disk clean-up to keep it running at all. Tissuema'am complains all the time about how slow it is and everytime I do anything on the PC accuses me of making it worse. The first problem that I can't fix is that she won't let me get her a new PC. I'd really like to buy her a nice laptop, but she says all she uses it for is checking email and playing solitaire. She doesn't want to spend the money. I really don't want to put any more money in this PC. At best, I could put a bigger hard drive in it and use it for back-up storage, but it's really not that great a system.

The problem I need help with is a program that may or may not really be deleted that is taking up a lot of room. I ran an early version of America's Army on it. I thought I removed it, but when I bring up the control panel and look at the Add or Remove Programs area I see ArmyOps taking up 2,698 MB. I try to uninstall, but it can't find ArmyOps.msi and won't remove it. I've looked through the program files and do not see any ArmyOps files anywhere. I don't even have a folder that big with what I have left on the machine. So I'm not sure if this is real or a glitch.

The easy solution is buying a laptop for my wife. I'm sure she'd love it compared to the current machine she is running. My question: Is there a program I can use to find out if this file really exists? I'm getting tired of moving files to my PC and cleaning up hers just to keep it running at a glacier pace. I've thought about letting the smoke out deliberately, but my cheap NE roots make that very painful to do. My boss has his 'repair shop' that he uses regularly to upgrade equipment. "Honey, my XXXXX just died. See, look at all the smoke it made."

[JiF]KellysHero · Post by **[JiF]KellysHero** » Sat May 19, 2007 1:44 pm

What it probably needs and this will also help is to reformat the HD and do a clean install of the operating system. Of course save any files since they will be lost in the reformatting.

[JiF]AlbieDamned · Post by **[JiF]AlbieDamned** » Sat May 19, 2007 2:45 pm

If you can't find anything under Program Files that looks like America's Army, then it probably means that the list which Windows maintains for the Add/Remove Programs feature is wrong. In other words, it's not really there.

[JiF]Mike · Post by **[JiF]Mike** » Sat May 19, 2007 3:20 pm

My wife had a pretty old pc until I upgraded and used the old parts for my HTPC, that system was pretty was nice as I had done an almost total upgrade. We then rearranged furniture and I let her start using the HTPC since it had more space was faster and all that. Needless to say I now have another pc as my HTPC as my wife has taken possession of the other one. She uses it for a lot more than email and simple little games now.

Give her a more powerful machine and I'm betting she would find more uses for it than us males could come up with.

[JiF]LtWaterboy · Post by **[JiF]LtWaterboy** » Sat May 19, 2007 4:55 pm

Tiss,

I'm assuming you did a file search for that particular file, right?

Not sure which Op system you have, but if you goto START/SEARCH/(type in filename & search in C:),
if it exists it will find its location.

This is the process under Windows XP. Don't remember if this is the same for W2000 or earlier.

LT

[JiF][AARP]Grimp · Post by **[JiF][AARP]Grimp** » Mon May 21, 2007 12:26 am

It may or may not actually be there. First you would prolly want to confirm its not there. If it is there you might want to see if there is an uninstaller in the games folder and try running it instead of using the Windows add/remove thingy. If the game is there and there is no uninstaller you can probably just delete the folder. That won't get rid of it in the add/remove thingy, but it won't be taking up the space. If you are concerned about it showing up in the installed software thingy and you can't deinstall it you will have to find the entries for it in the registry and remove them manually. I don't remember exactly, but I though XP or some version of Windows would ask you if you wanted to remove it from the list of softtware if it could not uninstall it because the files did not exist. If it does not ask you that ya prolly gotta go into the registry file and manually remove the entries for it. The registry can be a REALLY bad place if you mess it up. Might be best to find a PC geek to look at it.

Formatting and reinstalling the whole think is an option and will probably help it run faster in general, but it really not needed just because of game showing up in the add/remove software program. If your have never done that before you should prolly go find a PC geek to do it and make sure you get what ever files off it you want first. You will also need to have the CDs of the original software to put back.

[JiF][AARP]Tissueman · Mon May 21, 2007 4:31 am

I've reformatted the hard drive before and started over. I really don't want to do that unless I have to. Like most issues, I plan to ignore this as long as I can. As Tissuema'am is away for 3 wks I don't have to worry about it for a while.