Hiding a program

Hi all. I'm trying to hide a program from other users of this computer and I was wondering if anyone would tell me how to remove the program name from the Add/Remove program without uninstalling the program. I want to keep the program installed but I don't want it to show up in Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel. Thanks.

-John

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Management\ARPCache

That's the location of the key that controls what appears when you open add/remove programs. If you decide to delete something, be sure to export what you're going to delete so you can add it back in case anything goes wrong.

Go to start->run and type 'regedit' and click ok. From there, browse to the location listed at the beginning of the post. Highlight the folder that has the name of the program you don't want showing up in add/remove programs. Go to 'registry' and select export registry file. Save the file wherever you want, with whatever name you want. If other users mess around with your computer, you may want to hide this file as best you can, because double clicking on it will re-enter the information into the registry. From there, with the folder still highlighted, hit delete. Confirm the deletion and verify the results.

 

TweakUI.

 

Yeah, if you want to do it the EASY way

 

I always get myself in a jam when using Tweak UI. I experiment too much usually resulting in some oops .

Hiding folders or files is relatively simple. I just double click on the properties and change the attritubutes to hidden. Thus all is beyond sight until I click on view and change the folder options to show all files.

I just found out that jv16 power tools has the ability to remove a program name from the Add/Remove program in the Control Panel. At first I thought remove meant uninstall, but then noticed that the uninstall button was next to the remove button. Oh well. I don't use jv16 much, only to clean the registry every month or so. I'm not experienced enough to understand the full capacity of the power tools, but what I do know I love.

Thanks for the advice guys. It never hurts to have backup ways of doing things.

-John