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Installing Program problems

I'm having a problem installing a game that i have recently bought. When I first got it it installed fine. However I had to uninstall it, which i tried to do by going to add/remove programs on the control panel, but when i did this, uninstallshield opened, but remained minimized on my desktop, and wouldnt maximise when i clicked on it. this meant i had 2 uninstal it manually. when i came to reinstall the game, installshield did the same shield, and i cant install the game. another problem i have, which could be related is that i cant open some links on the internet, some of which have .dll in teh address. i couldnt open the link to verify my email to enter this site, i had to write it in manually. Can someone pls help me? i have recently been downloading updates for IE6 from the microsoft website, and may have updated my XP from microsoft, although im not sure if this worked.
Thank You,
Ian

msa2003

About the game. You could try the following. Run Registry Editor (regedit). Find the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products. This will contain a list of GUID-named subkeys. Find a subkey which will contain a value ProductName the same as your game name and remove it (subkey). Do the same with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\(some name)\Products and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall (check DisplayName).

I hope it will help.

msa2003

Issue with DLL may be related to your internet security settings. They might be too high. Try to replace them with middle. Also it will be good if you will provide there a link which is not working with your IE.

pratigan

I agree with msa2003 about the registry deletions. an additional note, please be careful when updating the registry, deleting entire entries in the registry can cause scandisk and defrag problems down the road. You may want to see if the game disk has an uninstall process on it. Most disks do. I'm also wondering about why you had to uninstall it in the first place. Is the game fully compatible with your system, especially the video card. Most problems with games are related to the video card compatibility.

msa2003

pratigan: It seems to be the problem with Windows Installer... Also I do not agree that the registry key deletion may cause any problems with scandisk and defrag. The keys and individual entries in registry are created and deleted probably every time you are installing, deleting or configuring programs and this doesn't lead to any programs (well, sometimes they are problems, say thanx to Microsoft ;)). The game is installed OK the first time. So it seems that the installer fails due to the some misconfigured registry keys.

pratigan

I do agree about the registry keys. I have seen multiple times when individuals delete registry keys directly that scandisk and defrag never complete, they just run and run. We have had to actually recover the registry in order to repair the scan and defrag problems.
However, a good secondary product, Norton Utilities, would take care of this for him without him having to edit the registry directly. I always attempt to inform people to avoid editting the registry unless they are ful knowledgeable with editting the registry. If yu perform as much of a manual install as possible and then run Norton Utilities, it will cleanup the registry entries for you and thereby should allow for a fresh clean install.

msa2003

I do not speak about Norton CleanSweep utility. I agree that it is usefull (allthrough I prefer Ontrack FixIt Utilities). Such utilities are helpfull (in the above example they fill find the registry key referencing the non-existing file and try to scan the disk for moved file or ask to delete this key if the file is not found) but they are costs much and sometimes are not so reliable than it is supposed. Also it's a good way to make a restoration point in XP before editing registry (well, I know that restoration points in XP are a real pain ;)), this will decrease the probability of system fault. Any registry backup utilities are good to. And the best way is to export registry key via regedit (Registry\Export registry file) prior to delete it to have an opportunity to restore it if something goes wrong.

msa2003

P. S. Long time ago Microsoft itself provided a pretty good utility called 'regclean' but now it seems to be far away from downloads.

waddle

ASKER

Thanks to msa2003, i changed my internet security settings on my firewall to medium, and the internet links seems to be fine now. there is still a problem with the installer part tho. I had to uninstall the game because there was an update available for it, but it some complications with that made me try uninstalling the game and starting again

waddle

ASKER

Ps, i have recently run the ad-aware program, could this have done anything? Ive run it lots of times before though, and ive had no problems. I've also got the windows washer program in the last month, but i'm certain i'd run this before installing the game, which installed first time round. Thanx:)

msa2003

waddle: What the name of the game? What installer is used to install the game? Windows Installer (a large file with '.msi' extension enclosed), InstallShield, Radium or NollSoft (written during the setup preparation)? Could you install another programs?

Try to unload (or uninstall) all the running 'rezident' programs, such as antiviruses, firewalls, guardiand (Norton CrashGuard, Aveo Attune, etc.) and others prior to installing game. Have you installed some of them after than you installed the game the first time? If yes, try to remove such programs.

waddle

ASKER

The game is called Championship Manager 4. It uses Installshield to install it, which opens, but stays minimised on my screen, and i cant do anyhting with it other than close it. I haven't put any of those types of programs on my computer since installing it the first time. all i have done it run the ad-aware program and removed the items it alerted me to. i also ran the windows washer program.

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msa2003

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Luc Franken

waddle,
No comment has been added lately (313 days), so it's time to clean up this TA.
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LucF
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