Hey gang, I've seen a few of these issues recently on PCs that were heavily loaded with crapware, the usual suspects, my pcbackup, optimizer etc. The initial infections can be random, but I've seen an increase in the following behavior:
You remove the malware, run through add/remove programs, and remove what you can. Once this is done however, the list is completely messed up. Several things, typical things, are now missing from the add/remove programs list. The remaining items can vary in size, from 5 items, to 10, but nowhere near the number that was there prior to the malware removal. Does that make sense? Things like AVG, or even Adobe whatever isn't on the list anymore. All of them are still installed and running - you can access them from the all programs list under start. They just no longer show in add/remove. This problem was more prevalent to me in Win 8, but I've recently seen it in Win7 and even WinXP.
Is there a tool one can run to "fix" this? It's rather annoying. You can run system restore, and get it all back, but obviously isn't the way you want to go. Originally I thought it was that crapware My PCBackup that was doing it on it's uninstall, but I've gotten it from other crapware as well. I recall seeing somewhere once about a "tweak" to see hidden items in add/remove, but I don't recall what that was now. (old the screen savers tip)
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