How to fix a missing uninstall button in Windows XP

I often have the problem that I cannot uninstall some programs in Windows XP. The programs are listed in the "Installed Programs" dialog, but the uninstall button is missing. Today I found a workaround how to re-enable this button:

1. Open the registry editor (Run: regedit.exe)
2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products
3. Then locate a subkey where ProductName is equal to the program to fix
4. Within that key, find a path that starts with C:\Windows\Installer followed by a GUID (e.g. {0A869A65-8C94-4F7C-A5C7-972D3C8CED9E}). Most of the time you will find this value in the ProductIcon value
5. Copy the GUID to the clipboard
6. Then navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall and check if there is a key with that GUID.
7. If there is no such key, simply add a new key by right-clicking on the Uninstall-Key and paste the GUID (including the { and } characters) as its name. You do not need to add any additional keys or data.
   
8. Now the un-installation should work as intended

I found another explanation on the web that said that sometimes there is a NoRemove key in an existing Uninstall entry. This value must be set to 0.
Note: Use all of the above at your own risk!

Multilingual DVB-T Experience for Free

Last week we got ourselves a new DVB-T stick. Unfortunately the software that was provided with it only allows to watch TV in German, even though an English audio stream is attached on some programs.

Even free programs like ProgDVB do not allow changing the audio channel to a foreign language - they want you to buy the Pro version which has this feature enabled.

But I found one program that allows DVB programs to be viewed with all audio streams enabled: Video Lan Client!

Newer versions have a DVB-T access module plus GUI that enables full access to DVB television. The only thing I haven't found so far is a channel list editor that works. Nevertheless the only thing you need to enter is the frequency and bandwidth of the program you want to watch. It should work with most USB DVB-T sticks on the market.

From the Media menu select the Open Capture Device... item. Then select DVB DirectShow option from the Capture mode. Now enter the correct frequency of your provider and set the bandwidth. You can either copy these settings from another DVB program or look them up on the internet.

Now you can select a program stream via the Playback menu. I noticed that the default settings do not enable deinterlacing. This can easily be changed from the Video menu. Finally, the most important setting for me is in the Audio menu where I can set the Audio Track to any available stream.

Software Update for Nokia 5310 Version 5.81

Today I updated my Nokia 5310 phone to the new 5.81 version. As I have read that there may be some problems with it I thought I'd report about my experience on my blog.

To find out what version is installed on your phone, type in *#0000# using your keypad. I had the 3.6 version installed. So I downloaded the latest version of the Nokia Software Updater. After a reboot it detected my phone connected via the USB cable.
I took the hint to backup the phone settings seriously. You can do that via the phone menu. Go to the Setting->Sync and backup->Create Backup submenu.

Then I started the update which ran automatically without problems. 10 minutes later the phone rebooted and requested the PIN code. Unfortunately all my personal data were deleted. So I had to restore the data I backed up before. That worked quite fine and I didn't loose any contact info or calendar settings.

What's new?
So far I found the following new options and functionalities:

• I can now add Java programs to my favorite's list.


• There is now a quick dial function. Just press one of the keys from 2 to 9 for 2 seconds.

Update: The newest version is V 09.42 which can be installed just as easy. I haven't found any major improvements yet (except for a new status bar when loading things).