Software Forum

For some reason there are lots of items in Unistall Manager of Ace Utilties which have '?' against them. More so, whenever I open the the Uninstall Manager, I see the status 'Possible Invalids: 8'.

The items which show up as invalid are:

DirectDrawEx
Fontcore
IE40
IE4Data
IE5BAKEX
IEData
MobileOptionPack
SchedulingAgent

Ironically none of these items show up in Add/Remove Programs in control panel.

Can I remove these entries from Uninstall Manager of Ace Utilities without any harm on the system? Why is it that Add/Remove Programs in control panel doesn't show these entries?

Any help on this will be highly appreciated.

be****g

I believe the "?" Question marks you see indicate these are Windows Help Files...I see those in mine too..These are all Windows Files-not sure of the "mobile option pack"..Maybe you have a laptop there..

These wont cause any problem so I recomend leaving them as they are..
"Removing the entry" would most likely be safe and cause no difference in your computers' operation..
Windows probably has updated these and severed some registry links to them..

I would NOT advise to uninstall any of these since they are Windows Files....

jazzbo............................................

All the entries you gave have no uninstall string (read "command") for them. That's why they are given as yellow question marks. The native 'add/remove programs' applet in Windows does not show such entries, nonetheless they are there in the Windows Registry.

To view the uninstall command for a particular entry, just right-click selecting that entry, then click 'Edit Entry'. If there is a valid string for that entry, you will see it there, if not an empty box will be shown.

Note: A question mark can also be shown for an entry if you have uninstalled it but the process failed to remove the entry name from the Registry. In this case also, you can safely remove the entry.

Thanks Jazz and Aneesh for your replies.

All 8 entries which I mentioned doesn't have any uninstall string. My major concern was to see if they in any case pertain to some kind of malware that's sitting in my system.

I'm still not sure what to do with them...

No, none of these entries is a malware. Infact, they are all Windows related. You can either keep them or delete them. If you are still unsure, then make a backup of the Registry before deleting the entries so that you can restore them at a later point.

Aneesh;Thanks for the explaination of the yellow Questionj marks..
I had wrongly ascertained these were the help file entries from the dis-used programs..
Are these Yellow "Q" marks generated by Windows or by Ace Utilities?

jazz.....................

The "yellow question mark" image is added by Ace Utilities for an entry which it detects as a "possible invalid" one.

Thank you guys for all the replies!!!

I've decided not to remove those entries since they are not malware. I recently purchased Spy Sweeper, and it didn't find anything of any malware nature installed on my machine. I think my computer is safe running all the good utilities.

And yes, ACE UTILITIES ROCK!!!