Background: I am messing with my computers trying to make a restore CD for my laptop but, as the laptop does not have a CD burner, I am trying to do it over the network connection so I can burn it on the home unit. So, I installed Symantec’s Ghost but I cannot get it to work. You have to run it in DOS mode and I have given up trying to get the network to work in DOS. So I tried installing some other Symantec crap called something like Multicasting Console which was not what I needed and I immediate removed it.
Now, after removing it, I go into the registry and there are still hundreds of keys from Symantec, a lot from something called “liveupdate”, but I especially noticed many of them are in the CLASSES and CLASS_ID parts, with those names full of gibberish. I understand a lot of what the registry keys represent but these have me quite lost.
Shit, this was meant to go in GQ. Could a kind mod move it?
BTW, after posting I realised installing the Crappy Console also installed some live update crap which I have removed and most of the registry entries are gone now and the rest I have removed manually.
The mainm question is still the same though. It was a General Question, not specific to this particular problem.
Classes are the file relationships, OLE info etc. Basically if you’re completely done with all Symantec software you can delete these classes. Just don’t come running to me if things break! If the files the classes quote aren’t around anymore it doesn’t hurt having these classes in the registry, they can’t do anything on their own. They’re just clutter.
Unfortunately the Windows registry is a bit of a free-for-all that Microsft didn’t see fit to police properly. There are “guidelines” for its use, but many software packages ignore them. Leaving class entries behind is the least of it.
In particular, these classes typically are COM objects - small bits of code that are designed to be used by several different software processes at once. The big long number (“2045EFE5…”) is a hex number called a GUID, which is a unique identifer for that particular COM object. The DLL name is the file in which the compiled code for the object is stored. The “ThreadingModel” part is an instruction to the operating system on some technical details on how to run the object in a threaded environment - I could get into the details, but trust me, you don’t want to know.
Like Futile Gesture says, if these objects truly aren’t used, they should have been deleted by the uninstall process. However, not all uninstalls are clean, and they may be left behind. Or it might be something that still is used somewhere on your computer - it’s hard to tell. You can try deleting them, but do so at your own risk.
Well, Trigonal, it’s going to be pretty hard to explain what “ThreadingModel” refers to unless you’re first familiar with OO programming & the different memory models Windows uses. Also, I’ve managed to purge my brain of the hell that is COM programming, so I’m not the best reference. If you really want to go more into detail on Windows threading models, check out this link. It gives a pretty concise definition of the COM threading models if you scroll halfway down the page.
If you want more detail, do a Google search on Apartment Threading Model - there’s a bunch of stuff there.
