Remove Program from the Add or Remove Programs List

Contributed by davak August 31, 2004  
Tagged: Windows

Sometimes you don’t want people to be able to easily uninstall software from a system. This reg hack will prevent it from showing up in the Add or Remove Programs List.

If you are not a jedi registry person, leave this section of windows alone. Backup, take out life insurance, etc…

Being able to manipulate the “Add or Remove Programs” list is helpful. You can hide programs that are installed to prevent them from being easily uninstalled, for example.

Here’s the area of the registry of which we will be working:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

Under this key you will find a listing of programs that are in your “Add or Remove Programs” list. Some will be easily named, others will not. Clicking on most of the sections under this key should display enough information about your key for you to be able to tell what program it is.

Many people will just delete the entry for the program to keep it from showing up in the list. However, this is a bad idea as it makes it much more difficult to ever uninstall the program in case you change your mind.

The best method is to actually fool windows into thinking it is a component. If windows thinks it is a component, it will hide it. This is easily reversed as well.

Let’s say I wanted to hide my Firefox installation, for example. I would be working on this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Mozilla Firefox (0.9.3)

To hide this, I just need to add a DWORD value to fool windows into thinking it is a component. To this, fully expand the key of the program in question (as I have done with the firefox key above). Then…

1. Right click on some blank space in the right column
2. Select New from the context menu
3. Select DWORD value
4. Name it SystemComponent
5. Right-click and select Modify
6. Change the value data to 1 and click OK

Your program will now be hidden in the Add or Remove Programs list. If you ever want this program to reappear, just delete the SystemComponent DWORD.