marcos9999 Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 I downloaded Online Armor 4.5 firewall but ran into problems with my printer drivers. So I decided to uninstall it, but when I tried it did not allow me. So I downloaded a "force uninstall" software and removed. Now, on the surface it looks like it's not there but OA still installed and creating some other problems. Can anyone step guide me on how to remove all the files from OA? I would appreciateThank you so much Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 (edited) What "force uninstall" program did you use so we know what we are dealing with?Looking here: http://support.online-armor.com/showthread.php?t=12769Did you install in safe mode? Did you reboot twice after uninstalling? Edited February 20, 2011 by zlim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcos9999 Posted February 20, 2011 Author Share Posted February 20, 2011 What "force uninstall" program did you use so we know what we are dealing with?Looking here: http://support.online-armor.com/showthread.php?t=12769Did you install in safe mode? Did you reboot twice after uninstalling?I used Revo uninstaller pro. The Online Armor folder with its components are still there, and when I try to delete it says I don't have permission (wow). The other funny thing is that I look in the regiedit and could not find a trace of the OA there either. The other strange thing is that even after I made a restore to a earlier date from instalation it would not erase the program... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I use Revo and found it to remove things, including a trial for Norton, which is notoriously hard to remove.What version of windows are you running? Once I know that, I'll do some more looking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aldago Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 What you should do is follow the suggestion to run your deletes in Safe Mode. When using the Windows Normal mode, running files get "locked" to other files and then can't be deleted because "they are being used by another program" and you can't get rid of everything during the uninstall. Safe Mode uses only necessary Windows files and most programs (unless they're particularly nasty) won't be "locked." I use Revo all the time and it's a great program deleting many registry entries and folders that Windows uninstaller leaves behind. But it doesn't get everything. After running Revo I always run a free program called Regseeker. When Regseeker opens, the first item in the navigation column on the left is "Find in Registry..." I click on that and type the name of the program I just deleted into the dialog and up comes many left over registry entries including hash entries which are usually not found by other registry cleaners. Hope it works for you.Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frapper Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 (edited) If worse comes to worst (and you have no clean image to fall back on) you may need to reinstall OA properly and start over. Have you checked to see if OA has a removal tool? Edited February 20, 2011 by frapper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcos9999 Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 What you should do is follow the suggestion to run your deletes in Safe Mode. When using the Windows Normal mode, running files get "locked" to other files and then can't be deleted because "they are being used by another program" and you can't get rid of everything during the uninstall. Safe Mode uses only necessary Windows files and most programs (unless they're particularly nasty) won't be "locked." I use Revo all the time and it's a great program deleting many registry entries and folders that Windows uninstaller leaves behind. But it doesn't get everything. After running Revo I always run a free program called Regseeker. When Regseeker opens, the first item in the navigation column on the left is "Find in Registry..." I click on that and type the name of the program I just deleted into the dialog and up comes many left over registry entries including hash entries which are usually not found by other registry cleaners. Hope it works for you.Good luck!Thank you so much. Yes, Regseeker is just fantastic. Easy light app, easy to launch and quickly finds everything left behind. I think I fixed the problem. It was also a combination of starting on safe mode (F8) Lessons learned: 1. Never install anything from the internet (unless you really need it or/ really know the source)2. Never uninstall anything on regular mode and always on safe mode Many thanks to this forum and all the PC gurus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tushman Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Lessons learned: 1. Never install anything from the internet (unless you really need it or/ really know the source)2. Never uninstall anything on regular mode and always on safe modeThere's plenty of freeware apps that are safe to install & use. Unless it contains a nasty virus or spyware, running the uninstaller to remove the app should be just fine without having to boot in safe mode. In the last 16+ years I've been surfing on the net, I've done it this way without any problems.There's always going to be one or two applications that are poorly written and don't always uninstall properly. It's impractical to me to always boot into safe mode every time just to uninstall a program. It's not only inefficient, but overly cautious. Using the Revo uninstaller is sufficient enough. The folder left behind by OA firewall could have been simply deleted by taking ownership rights of the files/folder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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