Users of Windows XP (and Windows 2000) may be frustrated at the seeming impossibility of removing exciting applets such as Microsoft Messenger which pop up seemingly at random intervals no matter how loudly you shout at it.
But help is at hand thanks to tireless work by boffins at the Spinola Institute - there's a secret way of making those pesky hidden applications appear on the remove programs menu.
While you could disable Messenger and its chums in an unsophisticated way by nuking the relevant .EXE files, this method has the advantage of using Windows' own uninstaller which should not only be tidier, but which also gives the process a nice touch of poetic justice.
In its wisdom, MS has chosen to hide selected bits of XP and Win2K from the installer/uninistaller, thus preventing users from getting rid of them. These applications include Messenger, Solitaire, Minesweeper, Pinball and Windows Update, along with more strange and eldritch components such as COM+ and FrontPage extensions.
As is usual with top secret, hidden aspects of Microsoft operating systems, the workaround is simplicity itself, needing only a simple text editor. The offending file is called SYSOC.INF which you'll normally find luring in the INF subdirectory immediately below WINDOWS. More...
News source: The Inquirer
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