This article focuses mainly on uninstalling things such as windows messenger, WordPad and other similar components that cannot be uninstalled by any normal means. To normally remove XP utilities and components, you would normally go to control panel>add or remove programs>add/remove windows components. But wait windows messenger is not there! Neither is WordPad, like omg! This is what you do. Find your sysoc.inf file. It is usually located in the C:\WINDOWS\INF folder. (The C:\WINDOWS\INF might be hidden, so go to tools>folder options>view and choose show hidden files and folders to unhide it). Open sysoc.inf in notepad. When you open the file you’ll see something like this: program=program.dll,Ocentry,program.inf,,numeral Programs that are not uninstallable have the word ‘hide’ or ‘HIDE’ somewhere in there. All you have to do is get rid of the word ‘hide’ and it becomes uninstallable. Ex. Pinball=ocgen.dll,Ocentry,pinball.inf,HIDE,7 should be changed to Pinball=ocgen.dll,Ocentry,pinball.inf,,7 Ta da!!! Now you can delete all of those unnecessary utilities/programs/components or whatever you call ‘em, that come with windows XP. And because I’m such a nice guy I’ll even include this so that you know what those crazy names are referring to AccessOpt-Accessability Wizard MultiM-Multimedia components, including Media Player, Volume Control, and Sound Recorder CommApps-Communications components, including Chat, Hyperterminal, and Phone Dialer AutoUpdate-Windows Automatic Update TerminalServer-Terminal Server Dtc-Distributed Transaction Coordinator Dom-COM+ WBEM-Windows Management Instrumentation Pinball-Pinball game MSWordPad-WordPad Msmsgs-Windows Messenger
