Topic awaiting preservation: unwanted mIRC

Does anybody know how to get ride of mIRC. I never installed it but it is in my list of programs. Every time I try to remove it I get this message, "you must exit mIRC before uninstalling". I cannot find it running under that name in my processes and it is pissing me off. I believe it may also be responsible for the new Scan U icon on my task bar which I neither installed or can get ride of.....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Somebody please know how to get ride of this.

I'll take you on a little "ride" to show you how you might get "rid" of that app.

First, have you tried uninstalling it in Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel? If not, this is how you want to get rid of it.

However, if that's what you're doing when you receive the error you mentioned, you need to go through all the configuration options in the program and find one that asks if it should start with Windows. Turn it off, of course, reboot and try uninstalling.

If you absolutely can't find that setting (look for it carefully), then try the following, for which I take no responsibility if you screw things up.

Now, before you do this, be sure to look in the Startup folder in your Start menu to see if mIRC is in there. If so, delete the shortcut and it shouldn't start. If not, continue...

Open RegEdit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Look in there to see if you recognize mIRC. Delete that key and it should no longer run on startup. Reboot and try to uninstall again with Add/Remove Programs.

Again, I take no responsibility if you screw up your registry. You do this voluntarily. Good luck!



[This message has been edited by Wes (edited 04-21-2003).]

Thanks for the speedy reply. I have tried the Add/Remove Programs and yes that is when I get the message. Have checked the startup menu and found nothing. i CANT CONFIGURE IT TO NOT START UP BECAUSE i CANT EVEN OPEN THE APP oooppps didnt mean to yell. I will try your method after work. thanks again and any other suggestions will be greatfully accepted.

Actually, what your going to want to do is open up the registry and do a search for mIRC, IRC, and the company that made it etc and, instead of deleting the keys, make a record of what you changed (on paper, with the directories also) and double click on the entries that it found and put something in front of the value.

What about running 'msconfig' and seeing if it's there?

Or just delete it in DOS.

But, why delete it? It is a very usefull, 3mb program.

delete prog bad.

If it's running in the background then you can start getting all sorts of errors etc. on Startup and/or other events from the missing executable.

What OS?

If it's Win 98 then give it the 3 finger salute and kill everything but Explorer and systray and then try uninstalling.

Windows XP and 2K are more difficult. I searched google for a list of necessary processes in Windows 2000 and didn't get a definative list. Check this out though and try killing all the non necessary processes this should allow you to kill any running instances of mIRC that may not be labeled nicely.

If you are in doubt about a process try dropping the process name in google and see if you can find out what it is. (or just kill it, a reboot should just restart everything so you can't really hose anything by just killing everything you can and then trying to uninstall)



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

The method Wes proposed is the one I use most of the times. Make sure you also look under HKEY_CURRENT_USER... rest of the path same as above, if it´s not under LOCAL_MACHINE.

CFB´s method is too much hassle for my taste. Who cares if some exotic keys are left in the registry? Who cares if you permanently screw up the regkeys for a prog you want to kill anyways?

Killing all non-necessary processes... may work or not. First thing the taskmanager doesn´t display everything; Second, it can´t kill everything (without causing a crash, that is); Third, Windows will most likely tell you the files are still "in use", even if you kill the process.

Another thing you could try: Start windows in safe mode and uninstall from there.

Actually, those residual keys can be bad, because sometimes they are what starts it up. I've had programs that, when a certain Windows event happened, it activated a reg key like those found in Wes's idea, but it was hidden.

start->run: type "regedit"

click on My Computer (or equivalent), and hit ctrl-f

Then, make sure only "Keys" and "Match whole string only" are checked. Type run in the box, and hit enter.

This will find the run keys in your registry. The run keys are what determine what gets started during the boot process. Go through each key, hit F3 to go the next key, and delete anything that looks like it has anything to do with mIRC.

Also, you have been warned that messing with your registry if you don't know what you're doing is real bad news.

Actually, just backup your registry before you do anything. Theres some free programs that do a good job.

I rebooted into safe mode and was able to uninstall it that way. Thanks for all the feedback.

Now I have to find out how to get ride of this stupid Serv-U program. It shows up in my task bar, bottom right on start up but I can't access any of the help files or options for it. When I try it tells me the files aren't availableand asks if I would like to look for them myself. When I do it directs me to a file that doesn't exist. I turned on hidden files etc. but nothing has helped.


BTW Win2k