I have a friend who has a very odd computer program. His son got a program called E-Brain from a company called DSI. Somewhere along the way, the installation of the program became corrupt. The program is now constantly asking him for the CD, which he no longer has. He cannot cancel the installation, nor can he uninstall it from the Windows Add/Remove Software function. Even changing the directory where the program files are kept didn’t stop it.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Zev Steinhardt
It sounds like the installer is being loaded on startup. That can be fixed by going to START - RUN - type “msconfig”.
It will bring up a powerful utility that he can use to disable the program at startup. It may take a minute to figure out what it is called but look at the directories listed for the big hint.
Thanks Shag.
The problem isn’t so much that it tries to install on startup — if it was, that wouldn’t be so bad. The problem is that even after you try to kill the install, it just starts up again.
It makes it nearly impossible to keep the focus on any window. Is there a way to take this program out of the installer’s “queue?”
Zev Steinhardt
I would try booting into Safe Mode to remove it - hold down <F8> as the computer starts up and you should get a boot menu - pick Safe Mode.
If you’re still having problems killing it in Safe Mode, I’d hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to get the task manager up and start killing processes - start with the non-Microsoft processes and end any that look as though they might be responsible for the installer. Even if you crash the computer doing this, you’re not effecting any permanent change - only unloading currently running processes.
If that works and you can get to a stable desktop that doesn’t keep stealing focus, it should be pretty simple to uninstall - either by the Add/Remove Programs dialog, or possibly through an uninstaller somewhere in the program’s own category in the Start Menu. If all else fails, you could open Windows explorer, look for and delete a folder named e-Brain in the program Files directory - not a very clean way to uninstall it, and will sometimes generate (solvable) error messages next time you start up, but sometimes it’s the only way to get an unwanted guest to leave.
And of course, if all else fails (either Windows won’t let you delete it or will not boot after you delete it by force), there is the WXP repair or ( :eek: ) the format and reinstall.
Normally the Explorer delete works if there is no other way to uninstall (but that may leave registry traces). If not, the DOS delete always works, but that is even more drastic and ** may** screw-up your system. If you are really feeling adventurous, you can muck about in the registry, but if you don’t know what you are doing you may be best off reinstalling Windows.
Another way to kill it is using the anti-spyware program HijackThis - it collects all the different startup stuff (Run and RunOnce from the registry, boot.ini, Startup folder, etc) into one place so you can see at a glance what’s going to be loaded when your computer runs.
That is, assuming you can get past this installer to a stable desktop environment, but that ought to be possible by killing the installer process and anything related to it.
Finally, it’s sometimes even worth holding down the <Shift> key from the moment you see the ‘Welcome’ screen until you are right into the desktop - this prevents some startup processes from being invoked.
That’s a utility I never heard of. Many thanks for mentioning it - it would have come in handy on my wife’s old computer.
As for Zev’s problem, I assume that some install code got put on the disk somewhere. If he could find that, and delete it, he might be left with a less annoying problem.
If you’re comfortable with the registry, I would suggest going to START - RUN - regedit and searching the registry for any strings with “e-brain” or “brain” in them and killing them.
Of course…fiddling with your registry is a risky thing but you can always make a backup before you begin and restore said backup if you run into any problems after editing.
This is how I get rid of stuff that just won’t go away - but then again I am Computer Courageous.
A safer way is to go to Start, Run, type MSCONFIG in the blank and press Enter. Click on the Startup tab and find that program in the list. Assuming you find it, just uncheck it and click Ok. Next time you reboot it should be disabled.