Filed under: Windows, Productivity, How-Tos
How to Add/Hide software in Add/Remove programs
by Brad Linder Jun 22nd 2007
Ever want to remove some of those little programs you never use that ship with Windows XP? Sure, they're not taking up much space, and hard drives are cheap these days. But it's the principle of the thing, right? And some of these programs don't show up on the Windows XP Add/Remove programs menu.Well, it appears that the only thing keeping you from uninstalling WordPad, Pinball, or other programs is one word in the sysoc.inf file. You can find sysoc.inf by navigating to \Windows\INF\sysoc.inf. If you open the file in Notepad, you should see a list of programs, most of which will be followed by the word "hide."
All you have to do is delete the word "hide," and save the file. Now when you go to Add/Remove programs, the unhidden programs will be there. Note that not every program can be removed just because you've unhidden it. For example you can't uninstall terminal services.
Sysoc.inf doesn't seem to exist in Windows Vista. Does anyone know if there's a similar trick for uninstalling hidden programs in Vista?
[via IntelliAdmin]
After spending the better part of an hour on 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Scott said 9:05AM on 6-23-2007
Nice find. A little half-assed in your description, though...
Before doing any of this, you should back up the original file. Secondly, remove only the word "hide" (leave the extra comma). Also, they will now appear in the "Add/Remove Windows Components," not the "Add or Remove Programs."
Reply
Mikael said 7:35PM on 6-23-2007
Does anyone know if this is possible to do with normal applications? I have a grandmother that tends to uninstall drivers/important programs every once in a while, so if I could just hide them that would save me a couple of hours of work every week :)
Reply
Alex LaFreniere said 9:16PM on 6-24-2007
Good job ripping this off of DL.TV. No, I'm sure they don't mind. Keep up the good work on the blog!
Reply
Brad Linder said 9:20PM on 6-24-2007
Alex: did you note that the read link points to a Microsoft knowledge base article from October 30th, 2006?
This tip has been around for a while, and we first saw it from IntelliAdmin, which is why we cited them in the post. If DL.TV also ran something on it, that's because they independently discovered this trick, either from IntelliAdmin, Microsoft, or one of the many other places on the web that explain how to show the hidden programs.
We thought our audience might be interested in this tip, so we passed it along.
Reply
Alex said 8:10AM on 6-25-2007
This trick is so old. Rather to do it with XPlite. This tiny app let you uninstall all the hide WinXP apps and much more functions.
Reply
akh said 9:56AM on 6-25-2007
For the technically challenged just download this simple app:
http://ltips.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-hide-programs-in-add-or-remove.html
But good to know what happens behind the scene. The app is from novell.
Reply
Klippoth said 11:56AM on 6-27-2007
I didn't create this trick, but hell, I've been using this trick for at least 2 years, if not 3 or so....I can't recall where I found it online, but it's been around forever....
Reply
Badhusha said 2:41PM on 8-05-2007
go to regedit and
just delete unwanted items from following key folder
KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
:-) njoy urself.
thanx n' regardz
badhusha
http://www.adiyakkamangalam.com
Reply
Laura said 12:50PM on 10-22-2007
I am needing to uninstall my adobe premiere 3 to reinstall it, it says when I try to uninstall that the windows installer can not be accessed, what do I need to do? Thank you for your help... Laura
Reply