Can't uninstall Photo pos pro

I have an ancient Windows Me, PIII 1GHz machine. However, photo pos pro is supposed to be compatible!

The installation apparently went fine. But the program wouldn't launch!

So I wanted to uninstall it, and possibly reinstall. But it can't be uninstalled by any means! I've already tried Add/Remove Programs, CCleaner uninstaller, Glary uninstaller and WinUtilities uninstaller. All try to uninstall using photo pos pro uninstaller, and all fail! I couldn't find a Revo Uninstaller compatible with Windows ME. I've downloaded the Brute Force Uninstaller (BFU), but haven't a clue how to write a script for it to do the job!

I needed help, and signed up in the photo pos pro forum. I was supposed to get an email and required to activate the account from that.

I did not receive any email! My address was given correctly. There is an option on the forum site to ask for another email so I can activate my acount. I did so. Still no email! The site said:

"If you have problems activating your account, please contact a board administrator."

But there is no obvious way to contact a board administrator!

So I emailed to support@photopos.com and also to photopos@freesoftware.co.il, as suggested on the photo pos pro "contact us" page. No response in 15 days! There is a disclaimer on their site indicating that the email might have gone to their spam folder (their response couldn't have gone to mine, -- I checked)! How helpful!

So as far as I'm concerned, I'm stuck with a malware that I can't remove! Please help me remove this. Thanks.

 

Greetings, Lakupisi.

Looks like you've gone through the normal uninstall routines. The only suggestions I can come up with are:

1. If I remember correctly, Windows ME did have a System Restore option - you might try restoring to a point before the program was installed.

2. If all else fails, you could manually search for any Registry entries that may have been created by the program, and renaming/deleting them. Of course, I would advise creating a Restore Point before attempting this.

Is the program causing any obvious problems?

 

Is the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility compatible anyone know? I would think it would be.

edit:

It is!!!


http://majorgeeks.com/Windows_Installer_CleanUp_Utility_d4459.html

 

Thanks Kestrel13!, Caliban and motc7, for your help.

Caliban, yes, I thought about system restore too, but the help says that it does not uninstall any program. What does that mean? After restoring to a date before the program was "installed", should I just manually remove the files related to the offending program (only those I can easily locate anyway). Is that going to be enough?

If I must, I could try messing with the registry (with help), but I haven't ever done it before.

The program doesn't create any obvious problems. But I'm not comfortable with leaving it as it is , -- I'll always be suspicious if something isn't right.


motc7, I've read up on the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility on your suggestion. But warnings like these make me uncomfortable:

Does it mean that the system restore will not help me undo such changes, if necessary?

Also, as I understand it, it removes only the installation references, and doesn't actually remove all files related to the program. If it is safe enough to use it in the first place, do I subsequently need to manually remove all such files I can find?


How do all you experts feel about the Brute Force Uninstaller (BFU)? Could it help? I've installed it, but the problem is, I don't have a clue how to write a script to have it uninstall the offending program. I couldn't find any examples to follow!

 

System Restore will not uninstall application programs; it will only restore Windows folders and other Windows components such as the registry. Anything in Program Files will remain.

The Windows Installer Cleanup Utility (http://majorgeeks.com/Windows_Installer_CleanUp_Utility_d4459.html) should work fine on Windows ME; the only problems that sometimes occurred was with Office 2007. However, it may no longer work after you did the System Restore.

I think you can just delete the application from your Program Files folder. (But try the Windows Installer Cleanup first.)

 

I tried to execute the installer of Photo Pos Pro again, to see what it does this time. It didn't even recognize that the program was already installed in my machine! It went on installing it again from scratch, and failed after 99% completion, getting stuck with a message that it was waiting for something else to complete (I got this message the first time also, but only momentarily, -- apparently the installation did complete that time, although the program or the uninstaller never ran)! Nothing else (no antivirus or firewall) was running to my knowledge (except things that must run)!

So I had no option but to kill the installation at this stage. The Photo Pos Pro icon was there on my desktop. I tried to run it. There was a difference from the original installation this time. It actually tried to run! But it gave the following errors:

Automation error , and

PosXpStyleFrame Ctl : Run-time error "0" (several times).

On hitting "ok" to close the error windows the program quit running.


Now I tried to uninstall it again with CCleaner v2.36.1233. Again I got the above two errors. But after I hit "ok" to get rid of the error windows, the Photo Pos Pro website opened in IE, saying "we're sorry to see you go" and asked for my feedback (which it failed to register)!

I killed this IE window, and to my surprise saw the Photo Pos Pro Uninstaller launch for the very first time ever! I let it run through, and it actually uninstalled to finish (except for a few files and dirs it couldn't remove, which I removed manually)! So, success at last, quite unexpectedly. Yay!

After this awful experience I'll never use any other software from "The Power Of Software company" ever again.

Thank you very much for all your help. Cheers.

 

Glad you got it, Lakupisi, and thanks for the feedback. :major