erasing all traces of a program from your computer

Ok so the game Rainbow Six Vegas has this annoying bug where if you install it and then uninstall it, you cant reinstall it (well, specifically you can install it but it wont run- it just crashes once you start it) unless you wiped all mentions of the game from the computer so its as if it was never there in the first place.

I uninstalled the game a while ago, then tried to reinstall it about three months later. It installed, but, as I guess it would, it crashed when I tried to run the game.

So does anyone know how to completely remove all mentions of a game from a computer (Im running Windows XP SP3).

I ran a registry cleaner to remove unused registry entries, but it doesnt seem to work.

Manually delete the reg files.

Check the appdata folder or the Xp version, I forget the name.

Googled the issue to see if there was a good walkthrough, but it's the darndest thing. Can't find anything on this. Maybe my Google-fu is weak tonight? Or maybe this is a very, very obscure problem?

Well it does seem to be a Ubisoft problem and we all know how Ubisoft tech support is...

You could try using Process monitor (Procmon). It's a free former Sysinternals now Microsoft tool that's somewhere on their technet site and rather invaluable when modding CA games as well. Process monitor will be able to tell what registry keys and files the program is looking at on startup, although some types of DRM might make the Ubisoft game commit ritual suicide in protest. However, since it probably is some weird DRM type software thing you will likely be able to find out a few things from the logs before a crash happens:

What files the game needs to launch its DRM, what registry keys the DRM is looking at prior to crashing and what files the DRM is looking at prior to crashing.

These clues in turn should point you to the particular DRM software being used, so you can then go on and hunt the web for clues on how to remove it or fix your problem. In case you are lucky the problem isn't with the DRM, you'll get a full trace of events and you can then inspect that to see where the game is crashing and what stuff must all be removed to completely uninstall it. Then you can move on to purging all its traces from your PC and installing it as if you never used it before.

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Originally Posted by pevergreen

Manually delete the reg files.

Check the appdata folder or the Xp version, I forget the name.

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That would normally be 'C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data'
There's also another "Application Data" folder under 'C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Local Settings'. In addition, you could check the copies of these folders in the Default User and All Users directories.

Note: These are hidden folders by default.

Thanks for the info guys.
R6V works fine now, though I dont let it update upon startup with its self-patcher (most annoying thing Ubisoft has done to its games- that stupid self-updater), for I think patch 1.06 is the problem that causes the game to not start.

CCleaner is okay.