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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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How to remove Windows (Desktop) Search … revisited | The random utterances of David Arno

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/21

Somehow, on one of my Windows XP VM’s, I installed Windows Search 4.0.

The indexer makes the VM dog slow, and even worse: the user interface of Windows Search 4 is much worse than the “Advanced” version of the default Windows Search.

But: it is tough to uninstall Windows Search 4.

When you try to uninstall it from the Control Panel “Add/Remove Software” the only thing that happens is that the entry vanishes.
But Windows Search 4 stays.
And the uninstall-files disappear.

So: More firm measures are needed.

Luckily, step 3 in this article works fine: How to remove Windows (Desktop) Search … revisited | The random utterances of David Arno:

To remove Windows Search version 4 from XP, try the following steps:

  1. Start by running up Add & Remove Programs from the control panel and look for Windows Desktop Search in the list. Unlike with version 3, Windows Search v4 should be there.
  2. If not, open a cmd window (click on Start, then “Run..” and type cmd in the Run dialogue that then appears). Then copy and paste the following line into the cmd window: 
    %systemroot%\$NtUninstallKB940157$\spuninst\spuninst.exe
  3. If that also fails and you get a “The system cannot find the path specified.” error, then I have zipped up a copy that you can download from here. To work out where to extract it to, type: 
    echo %systemroot%

    into your cmd window and note the location it points to (it is likely to be C:\Windows, but may not be if you upgraded to XP for Windows 2000 for example). Open the zip file, and extract the $NtUninstallKB940157$ to this location. Now repeat step 2.

–jeroen
(who is happy to have the advanced version of classic search back).

Advanced version of the classic windows search

This entry was posted on 2010/04/21 at 06:00 and is filed under Power User. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “How to remove Windows (Desktop) Search … revisited | The random utterances of David Arno”

  1. Cathy's avatar

    Cathy said

    2010/08/31 at 04:11

    This is the most amazing fix I have ever used. I have done so much to clean up my windows XP, SP3, to get it running smoothly, and the only application error message I continually get is about the Windows Search Service. When I looked on Windows web site, they said this was an update for Vista and Windows 7 – neither of which I have. Why, or why, then did it get downloaded onto my computer? Mysteries abound…..

    Thank you very much indeed.

    Reply

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