Earlier today, a colleague ended up with a giant blank space in the listbox of the ‘Add and Remove Software’ Applet under Windows XP. Something broke during the install of an application.
There’s an easy solution to this problem. It requires a little bit brainwork though, but if you managed to get to this blog, you’re qualified.
- Check the applet. Memorize the application before and after the white space
- Open up Regedit
- Navigate to the uninstall section of Microsoft/Windows/currentversion under LOCAL MACHINE
- Under that section, installed and shown items will have a displayname and a display icon. Order all the entries mentally.
- Remove the offending entry.
I see that the list in the applet can only be sorted on name, size and a couple of dates (frequency use/date last used): maybe Microsoft should add an extra entry in there that sorts the items on ‘physical position’ reflecting the registry. I mean, think of it from a programmer’s perspective: they loop through the list of entries and after that they sort it. Makes sense to add that extra type of sorting, no?