'Add and remove' on my secondary hard drive - how?

I've got two drives, one small 30gig thingy with Windows installed on it and one big 200gig to store my files and programs. The problem is, I've just finished formatting C: (the primary, small one) and reinstalled XP and decided to clean up D (the biggie) a little, but the add and remove utility doesn't want to list the programs installed on it. This cause some problems when, per example, it comes to Steam, which doesn't seem to have a uninstall file anywhere... Any suggestions?

 

Just to be 100% certain - Am I understanding you correctly?

You had windows installed on C: drive, but installed all your programs to the D: drive, and have since formatted the C: drive?

 

Anyways, if I AM understanding you, then there are some big issues here: All the registry information for these programs would have been on the C: drive, and is now long gone. The games are no longer installed on the C: drive, despite having program files on the D: drive.

You should ALWAYS, ALWAYS install programs to the same drive as Windows. Keep the INSTALLERS (ex. setup.exe) on your other drive, so when you format, you simply have to run those again.

If I haven't missed the mark here (which is a distinct possibility), the only way to fix your programs is to install them again.

 

That is correct and, up until just now, I've never found any side effects what so ever from doing so. But you're probably right so I'll follow your advice from now on.

However, that doesn't solve my original problem; how do I delete an app "the right way" without an uninstall file and without access to add and remove? I don't believe its very good to just delete the whole program folder...

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but thanks anyway for your help!

 

You're right, it isn't usually a good idea to delete a program file folder. This is due to the registry information that would be left behind. (the uninstall routines usually take care of this).

However, since you've formatted your system drive, there is no registry information to worry about, and you should be able to manually rip the folders on your D: drive.

You may also want to remove the OLD %PROGRAMFILES%\common files directory as there is a slight chance of application files being there that might interfere with normal operation.