uninstall - How To Remove A Broken Program From the Programs and Features List In Windows 7?

On a Windows 7 64-bit desktop, there is a program on the Programs and Features list (Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features) that refused to uninstall. The error obtained is:

 Error 1723. There is a problem with this Installer package.
 A DLL required for this install to complete could not be run

I suspect filer were deleted or corrupted. The big problem is that the program refused to install itself over the broken version.

So how to I manually clean up the list of installed program?

Answer

It depends on how the program is detecting that it is already installed.

The programs showing in the Programs and Features list are generated from the registry keys under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

The program may be looking elsewhere in the registry, or looking for a file on disk, in order to determine if it is already installed.

You can use Process Monitor (ProcMon) from Sysinternals to see which files and reg keys it is poking at when it refuses to cooperate with you.