[tex-live] Windows XP X64 uninstall goes badly, more info.

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 13 August 2010 Beuthe, Thomas wrote:

 > UNRESTRICTED | ILLIMITÉ
 > 
 > Alright,
 > 
 > I have some good news and some bad news on this issue.
 > 
 > The good news is that my install/uninstall seems to be working
 > correctly now.  The bad news is that I really have absolutely no
 > clue as to WHY.  Perhaps it was my state of mind that fixed things
 > last night?  Perhaps it was the Leonids?  I don't know.

More likely the Perseids than the Leonids.  Or probably, since you're
on Windows, the Leonids from last year?  :)

 > In any case, when I got home last night, I attempted to go ahead
 > with modifying the registry for the uninstall in various ways that
 > were suggested, but invariably, for whatever reason, the system
 > kept telling me that the package was already uninstalled.  Then, as
 > a result of my fiddeling somehow I managed to get rid of the
 > desktop icons and the program entry and even the uninstall entry in
 > the registry, probably due to a partial uninstall caused by my rude
 > prodding.

I'm aware that the hint comes too late but maybe it's helpful whenever
you encounter such problems in the future:

Before you change anything in the registry manually, it's best to dump
the content of the registry to a text file.  I don't have Windows and
therefore can't provide precise instructions.  AFAIR there is an
"Export" entry in the "File" menu of regedit.exe.

The created text file is UCS-2 encoded, if it screws up your favourite
text editor, try another one.  Emacs is always a good choice.

Such a registry dump is quite useful.  Especially if you create
another one after you modified the registry and the system behaves
differently then.  You can use standard tools like "diff" in order to
compare the two files.  It helps to find out what you've actually
changed and which of your changes solved the problem.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
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