Uninstall.exe hangs on Windows 7

[_ollie]

Hi,

RE: Windows 7 Uninstall Hangs.

I made the mistake of installing the trial WinGate software on my Windows 7 Pro PC. Now I want to uninstall it completely but I can't. There is something not right about your uninstaller.

I'm running a core 2 quad with 4g ram. I'm running AVG and Zone Alarm.

Clicking the uninstall shortcut, displays the first screen. When you click Next this first screen disapears and only the tray icon remains.

I've done some digging.
1.) In task manager the CPU allocation to the uninstall.exe is constantly 25%.
2.) ProcessMon shows that the uninstaller is trying to open Registry Keys that don't exist.
a.) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CTF\KnownClasses
b.) Eventually a thread aborts. The tray icon remains and the unistall is no further forward.

Attempts to remove it manually
3.) So far I have manually uninstalled the network driver by loading up Windows Device Manager and showing Hidden Devices then uninstalling the WinGate Vister Driver.
a.) This forces a reboot which i've done.
4.) I then re-ran the uninstall but had exactly the same issue.

Please can you tell me how to clean all files and Windows Services?

I hope you will be able to help me. I look forward to your reply.

Rgds, Ollie

[adrien]

Hi Ollie

Sorry to hear about your problems uninstalling. And thanks for the information. I've not seen any reports before about the registry key you mentioned. None of our code tries to access it, but it could be in some library or OS API.

Have you tried disabling those AV products? I'm not familiar with latest versions, but many AV products block registry access, and install filter drivers which mess with WinGate.

If you have the driver uninstalled, then you can remove everything else manually.

service removal: delete registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinGateEngine
WinGate removal:
* on 64 bit OS: delete registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WOW6432Node\Qbik Software
* on 32 bit OS: delete registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Qbik Software

You can delete the Program files \ WinGate folder. Also AppData\Qbik

Regards

Adrien

[m0nzderr]

Well, I got the same problem. After several attempts of running uninstall and then killing its process, reboot, etc., I found that WinGate engine just didn't start anymore.
That somehow solved my problem, (just keeping it disabled), but I still would like to find out the way to be able to remove it completely.

[adrien]

Hi

in the past where we've seen issues uninstalling, it's been related to uninstalling the network driver.

What you can do is

a) disable the WinGate service from starting
b) reboot
c) try the uninstaller again.

That will make sure that the network driver isn't initialised, so there won't be any problems stopping it for the uninstall.

There are also manual ways to uninstall if you've already deleted a bunch of files, but it may be easier to reinstall then uninstall in this case.

Regards

Adrien

[m0nzderr]

a) disable the WinGate service from starting
b) reboot
c) try the uninstaller again.

Just tried to do that: installed it over again, disabled service, rebooter, and launched its uninstall.
Got same behavior - uninstall window disappears just after the first screen, its process hangs, while about 50% of CPU is consumed by svchost.exe and explorer.exe
Later I'll try to do it on another PC, just to see how would it be.

[dylanh724]

Wow, I only had the software installed for 30 mins and it still won't uninstall. Nice trap.

[adrien]

Hi

Please see the response I made on several of your other posts on different forum topics relating to this matter.

due to forum spammers, we moderate posts from new members.

regards

Adrien de Croy