More Issues Uninstalling AOL 9.0VR and Other Problems

marah_marie

I selected 6 programs for removal, listed in the screen shot below.

The Software Manager was run in regular Uninstall (not Custom) Mode and it hung on them.

The AOL Uninstaller only showed an empty window, instead of listing the AOL Connectivity Service for removal and instead of showing the links on it to "Search for older versions".

Finally I hit "Cancel" on the AOL Uninstaller window, which returned me to the Software Manager.

The Software Manager continued to try to remove files and folders like everything was OK, but it wasn't.

AOL is still installed on my computer, but PT did manage to uninstall it's Uninstaller, so now I have a corrupted installation of AOL with 4 processes still running.

I'll have to uninstall AOL manually (or use AOL's One-Click Fix to reinstall the missing parts). I'm not *looking forward* to this.

If you want me to copy/paste the next few points into a new topic I will but why are there so many discrepancies between PT 2006 and 2007?

Here are some examples:

1. The 2006 Reg Cleaner in Aggressive Mode says I have 42 reg discrepancies: the 2007 version says I have 2,878:

2. After the corrupted AOL removal attempt, I ran a Reg Finder search for the word "aol." 2006 said there were 442 AOL reg entries; 2007 said there were 839:

Also, why is the Software Manager once again trying to remove C:\Program Files?

Why wasn't the Software Manager able to shut down the processes that can be traced back to C:\Program Files\Common\AOL?

There's a lot going on with the latest version that I just don't understand.

Forgive me for not knowing, but how do I run jv16 PT in debug mode? I looked at every toolbar option but couldn't find it.

redseujac

As to debugging, I guess you must create a file "DebugMode.dat" and put in the main directory of the program.

marah_marie

redseujac wrote
As to debugging, I guess you must create a file "DebugMode.dat" and put in the main directory of the program.

Went ahead and did that, but I fear my actual question was, "How do you run the program in debug mode?" and with no answer I'm unsure how to proceed.

For what it's worth I downloaded MS's Debug Analysis Tool and have it watching jv16PT.exe for memory leaks and crashes, but I have no idea if that's the right way to go about this or not, and I've never used the debug tool, so this plunges me right back into newbie-land as far as my expertise is concerned. You might as well have a monkey doing this as me...isn't there a command line parameter to start jv16 PT in debug mode? And doesn't PT have to have a debug engine of some sort written into it for it to work? I'll give it my best shot if you'll just help me fill in the blanks.

I'm going to update my tutorial with a link to the latest bug report for 2007 so people can see why I'm not ready to tell others to use it yet...sorry if it seems harsh, but if someone were to use the 2007 tool and blame me for what happens with it, I would feel responsible and I would feel bad for them.

jv16PT 2006 still does an excellent job, after all, even in the registry. I've used it to remove many programs' reg entries, not just AOL's, then gone into my registry through regedit and checked every entry left (a time-consuming process indeed) and sure enough 2006 got rid of everything I wanted gone. I can't knock it.

tullik

marah_marie wrote
... Went ahead and did that, but I fear my actual question was, "How do you run the program in debug mode?" and with no answer I'm unsure how to proceed. ...

On your desktop, just create an empty file called "DebugMode.txt."

Rename it to "DebugMode.dat."

Cut and paste it into the directory where you have the PT2007 "jv16PT.exe."

The next time you run PT2007, it will be in debug mode - you will see a file called "jv16PT_debuglog.txt" on your desktop.

To turn it off before your next PT2007 launch, simply delete "DebugMode.dat" or rename it to "NoDebugMode.dat."

marah_marie

tullik wrote
marah_marie wrote ... Went ahead and did that, but I fear my actual question was, "How do you run the program in debug mode?" and with no answer I'm unsure how to proceed. ...

On your desktop, just create an empty file called "DebugMode.txt."

Rename it to "DebugMode.dat."

Cut and paste it into the directory where you have the PT2007 "jv16PT.exe."

The next time you run PT2007, it will be in debug mode - you will see a file called "jv16PT_debuglog.txt" on your desktop.

To turn it off before your next PT2007 launch, simply delete "DebugMode.dat" or rename it to "NoDebugMode.dat."

Got that done and I'm using v.413 in debug mode now and it isn't going well.

Just some highlights before I use System Restore to try to undo what's going on:

Ran the Uninstaller in Regular (not Custom) Mode to remove 8 programs at once installed by AOL.

As usual with all 2007 versions, the Software Manager tried to remove C:\Program Files and was unable to remove aol.ascd (the process was still running; since AOL's Uninstaller didn't kill it I probably should have disabled it before I got started, but I couldn't know that until I got in there).

It ran the AOL Uninstaller with no other problems.

This is where it gets bad.

I ran the Registry Cleaner in Aggressive Test Mode, with display settings to show like jv16PT 2006. Big mistake. I'm not sure which of those steps was the mistake, but it took over 5 minutes to finish scanning, found over 4,000 reg entries for removal, and when I, feeling a bit stupid, selected to renove all of them at once, it started removing exactly 1 entry at a time every 1.5 seconds (yes I'm clocking it) and has not sped up any since. It's been running for about half an hour now at steady 100% CPU.

I closed and re-opened Firefox during that time, and found that all my FF RDF files had been deleted (by jv16 PT? I don't know); all my customizations are gone. I'm not even sure if System Restore can fix that (it hasn't done the trick when I've lost RDF files in the past).

I'm afraid of burning out my CPU, since it's run absolutely steady at 100% for so long now, and the Reg Cleaner won't be done deleting entries at this rate until about 10 o'clock tonight (it's after 8 as I write this).

So I'll have to kill jv16PT.exe manually and get on with trying to restore whatever I've lost here (I'm not sure what the total extent of damage, if any besides the Firefox RDF files, is yet).

I hope I don't burn out my CPU. I bought it like, 5-6 months ago, and it was a serious upgrade for me. 2007 is not ready for prime time...

I'll get jv16 (the dev) my debug.txt file if he wants it, but I give up on PT 2007.

tullik

tullik wrote
tullik wrote
Ranger Bob wrote... but the truly large number and what is really concerning me is the ActiveX scan which I just ran and it found 7434 entries. This was a stand alone ActiveX scan, nothing else marked in the scan. ...

That is amazing ... I get zero hits with the ActiveX scan.

If I had that many, I'd do a raw format scan, then delete and backup in groups. For one example, Select-->By frequent column data-->Error description-->whatever ...

That was on my Vista system.

On my XP Pro system, v 1.7.0.414 found nearly 3900 lines in the ActiveX/... scan.

I'm removing them now in groups (with backup, of course). It's taking a half second per line -- unless it gets faster, that's about an hour ...

Added note: It sped up - took 26 minutes to do 3386 lines. I'm going to see if v 1.7.0.413 finds the rest … later: it did, 468 lines.

If you were in debug mode during all this, the 5 minute scan and 1.5 seconds per line is probably not unreasonable.

BTW, registry cleaner doesn't delete files ...

If you decide to try again later, don't do debug mode for such a large operation -- that debug file could be rather large.

marah_marie

tullik wrote
tullik wrote
tullik wrote

That is amazing ... I get zero hits with the ActiveX scan.

If I had that many, I'd do a raw format scan, then delete and backup in groups. For one example, Select-->By frequent column data-->Error description-->whatever ...

That was on my Vista system.

On my XP Pro system, v 1.7.0.414 found nearly 3900 lines in the ActiveX/... scan.

I'm removing them now in groups (with backup, of course). It's taking a half second per line -- unless it gets faster, that's about an hour ...

Added note: It sped up - took 26 minutes to do 3386 lines. I'm going to see if v 1.7.0.413 finds the rest … later: it did, 468 lines.

If you were in debug mode during all this, the 5 minute scan and 1.5 seconds per line is probably not unreasonable.

BTW, registry cleaner doesn't delete files ...

If you decide to try again later, don't do debug mode for such a large operation -- that debug file could be rather large.

I can't believe you're defending this, Tullik. It took 45 minutes for those entries to be deleted one by one (why one by one?) during which time my CPU ran at 100% *continually* even after I killed every unnecessary process on my PC, including Explorer and my desktop skins/wallpapers, and even if it was in debug mode, so what...45 minutes seems perfectly "unreasonable" to me.

If I take the time and energy to complain about what I feel is a ridiculously slow and CPU-consuming reg entry removal process, it would probably be best not to trivialize the complaint. You can tell me not to remove all reg entries at once in debug mode, or tell me not to use the PT 2006 interface with PT 2007, or tell me another way to avoid the problem (such as not running the scan in Aggressive and/or Test Modes) but so what if it's not an unusual side-effect of what I did. It might not be unusual, but that doesn't it make it the right way for it to go.

That said, I want to update now on what happened:

Maybe I said above (I don't feel like re-reading it) that jv16 PT deleted the RDF files. From what you say, it can't. Fine. How about the reg entries associated with those RDFs (if any)?

All I know is when I opened Firefox, I got 3 messages that various RDF files were missing, and the browser skin and customizations I had were gone. I have FF horribly tricked out, with menus compressed and dozens of addons I could no longer access because the Addon Menu kept freezing up after that happened, so that put me in a very bad spot. I actually had to use IE7 to post here last night, and I hate IE.

System Restore can't bring the missing FF stuff back (as I wrote last night, I've tried that in the past without luck) so I didn't even bother with that.

Fortunately (very fortunately, or I would be too mad for words right now) I keep a partial copy of Disk C:\ on Disk D:\ these days, so it was a trivial matter for me to uninstall Disk C:\'s copy of Firefox, delete the directory for it, copy Disk D:\'s copy of FF to Disk C:\ and proceed from there. My backup copy was up to date with my skins, bookmarks, and customizations intact, so luckily that story had a happy ending.

Is there something seriously wrong with jv16 PT v.413?

Not only did it find 4,092 reg entries for removal the first time I ran it last night, but after that scan finally stopped I ran another one in Aggressive Mode just for kicks (feeling like a real daredevil last night I guess) and it found another 5,000-something "unnecessary" entries.

Nearly 10,000 unneeded entries in one night? How could that be when I'm a religious user of jv16 PT 2006 and earlier versions of 2007's reg cleaning tools?

It seemed my PC was perfectly clean in the first place, so why all this "dead wood" now? What is it trying to remove...the entire Registry?

As to your instructions to create the debug file, they didn't work. Renaming the .txt file to a .dat file, then cutting and pasting that into the jv16PT.exe directory, did *not* create a .txt file on my Desktop after I finished running jv16 PT in debug mode. (No text file in the Directory, either.) It's too bad. That's one debug file I would have loved for the dev to see.

tullik

I did say "if" -- truly sorry so little worked for you. :|

BTW, I tried to find some credible connection between Firefox .rdf files and the registry, and between the Firefox user profile and the registry.

There appears to be none on my Vista or XP Pro. It looks to me like Firefox assiduously avoids the registry. Almost everything is tied to the Firefox user profile, which Firefox knows how to find using a fixed directory path ...

redseujac

I do agree...

1) Registry Cleaner never deletes files and even is not able to do that;

2) I checked my Registry (Windows XP Home SP2) and did not find any entry associated with Firefox .rdf's.