Need help uninstalling some stupid program

[Oblivion]

Hey, guys. Here's the deal.

I had AOL 9.0 on my computer for quite some time, and I haven't used it in like 2 years ever since I got DSL. Out of the blue, it suddenly stars itself and every time I shut it down, it kept doing that. I tried to uninstall it using the Add/Remove function in the control panel (oh, I got Windows XP btw), but it freezes every time and I can't do anything.

So my question is, is there an alternate way to get rid of this cursed program? I was having a sorta similar problem with Kazaa, and I downloaded this program called Kazaabegone or something like that, and it helped. Is there any program that's AOL specific that can uninstall it? Actually, I'll take anything at this point.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Davros]

uninstall it in safe mode - try that
otherwise look in the default places to disable it

 

[Oblivion]

Yeah, should have mentioned I tried doing it in safe mode as well. Same problem, it kept freezing and I couldn't uninstall.

Where are the default places?

And would it be a bad idea if I just found the direct folders and killed it from there?

 

[fromfrom]

And would it be a bad idea if I just found the direct folders and killed it from there?

That is what I do a lot with programs that don't uninstall or not uninstall completely. After that I run cCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com) to clean the registry. Worked everytime for me but of course your results may vary.

 

[Oblivion]

That is what I do a lot with programs that don't uninstall or not uninstall completely. After that I run cCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com) to clean the registry. Worked everytime for me but of course your results may vary.

Oh, thanks a lot.

Also, do you (or anyone) have any good memory optimization and hard drive space saving programs that you could possibly recommend?

 

[Bludd]

Memory defragmentation is nonsense.

Defrag your drives.

 

[Blazkowicz]

check the list of programs at start-up in msconfig, check running services.. (I for one hate security center, I disable it along with a few other ones)

if you can't get rid of some nagging crapware or window what you can do is search for all occurences of "AOL" or whatever the program name in the registry, and delete all related stuff. (I do it the boring way, hitting F3 in regedit. never tried ccleaner or other "registry wipers")

to save space and resources you can disable windows system restore, and hibernation.

 

[Simon F]

If it's something that is launching itself when windows boots up, try Startup Control Panel to disable it.

 

[Bludd]

If it's something that is launching itself when windows boots up, try Startup Control Panel to disable it.

Another alternative is Autoruns.