How to remove blank lines.....

RichPLS

Champion
In Add/Remove programs, I have a lot of blank lines after Autodesk Civil Design 3, and want to know if there is a way to remove these additional lines. There are like a hundred pages of blank till you get to the rest of the programs installed.
Thanx

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

_WW_

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Yeah...mine does that too. Lists all the programs that start with an "A" then miles of nothing until you get to the bottom.

Interestingly enough, it seems like all my installs have done this with the exception of an install on a FAT32 format.

....WW (5.0)
 

RichPLS

Champion
I only run NTFS...
But any way to edit and remove these lines?

Seems like there should be.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

cereal1

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I suggest if you haven't already to Open 'regedit' from the Run Menu and make your way here:[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall]

The Uninstall folder should have a + before it, open it up and you should see alot of {00F822AD-0798-4F54-BA6B-440D0BD687D7} values.

Click on each one and look for DisplayName in the right-side window.

If it's DisplayName is missing or blank it'll show up blank in the Add/Remove Programs window.

(You should always backup or create a restore point before messing with your registry)<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by cereal1 on 01/31/05 12:31 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

diplomat696

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Another way you can remove items from the add/remove programsa lines is if you have norton system works and i know not everybody does, but in there it gives u an option i believe to hide/show certain programs in the box.

If you did have that and that is assuming a lot you can hide them that way also.
 

RichPLS

Champion
Yes I have Norton Utils 2004, and will look into this...
Any other tips.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

RichPLS

Champion
Cereal1, that is what I am looking for...Thanks for the basics...
There are not but a fraction of folders under ...\...\...\currentVersion\Uninstall as I have in the Add/Remove programs....

The first 40 or so are alphanumeric like {095B1979-B356-4E93-840B-B9808A2A3120}
then the last 50 or so are named programs

Some do not have a display name, but have a name I recognize under displayicon...

I expected to see lots, as in literally hundreds with noname, and nothing recognizable, which there is only about roughly 100 entries, not multiple hundreds of entries.

Anyway, reg is backed up, but do not see bunches of blank entries.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

cereal1

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I've never had that problem, so I dont really know what else it could be. Maybe there's an invalid entry in list causing the blank spaces. I dont know what else it could be.

You could try a Registry Cleaner, like the one in "TuneUp Utilities 2004" It finds invalid entries and deleted them. I run it once a week and dont have any problems.

But, in actuality, I have no idea what else to do.
 

_WW_

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Using the up down arrows on the keyboard to select programs treats this large blank space as a single entity instead of hundreds of single lines. Somehow I think one of the tweaks I've done to speed up or modify XP has caused this. Perhaps disabling messenger, highlight recent installed programs, disable balloon tips, etc?

Perhaps it is the registry cleaner I use which is RegScrubXP?

....WW (5.0)
 

_WW_

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Just noticed you mentioned Autodesk. My blank space is just before Autodesk Learning Assitance. A program that is not listed in the add/remove is AutoCAD LT 2000i which was installed as an update over AutoCAD 98.

I wonder if these CAD programs are causing this?

....WW (5.0)
 

RichPLS

Champion
That is what I think, that it is related to AutoDesk...

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

_WW_

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Yeah...our machine at the office has CAD also and has the same blank space. But then I set it up and did most of the same XP tweaks on it that I have here.

The install I had for a few weeks in FAT32 didn't have the CAD programs installed now that I think about it...:)

....WW (5.0)
 

pbyhistorian

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There is a free applet that apparently fixes this problem but I'm always cautious about turning such software loose on my machine - even if it does have a good review or two (it's easy to fake reviews).

But it did give me the right clue. In the Windows XP registry, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. You will see the nasty-looking entries mentioned above. It is the "DisplayIcon" fields that need to be fixed- not the "DisplayName" fields.

The one you're interested in will have a DisplayName that is alphabetically between the entries immediately above and below the huge gap. (BTW, click on the gap to see if you have more than one.)

If the DisplayIcon field specifies a program name, it should be followed by a comma and then an integer indicating which embedded program icon to display. AutoDesk seems to use -1 for the index when it really should use 0.

Before changing my AutoCAD 2002 entry to use 0, I changed a similar entry from 0 to -1; the entry was replaced by a second gap in my "Currently installed programs" list. I confirmed that changing it back to 0 restored the entry (and removed the new gap), and then I changed the AutoDesk entry to use 0. AutoCAD 2002 appeared in the installed-program list in place of the original gap.

At first, I suspected the gap was caused by the Sun (Java) and Adobe entries, since they often had double backslashes embedded in the path to the icon file. Fixing these had no effect - evidently, double backslashes do no harm.