Windows Registry Uninstall Key
Uninstalling a retail product key on a PC can be useful if you wanted to sell or give the PC away with Windows 10 still installed by not activated, or if you just wanted to use the product key to activate Windows 10 on another PC. Uninstalling the product key on a Windows 10 PC will not remove the key for that PC from Microsoft activation servers.
Not many may know, but there are different ways to uninstall a program in Windows 10/8/7. You can uninstall programs using the Control Panel and navigating to the Programs & Features applet, or you can use the Program’s own uninstaller, which you can find in the Program folder, should the need to do so, ever arise. But if the program’s entry is missing in the Control Panel or the Uninstaller is not available, or these ways do not work for some reason, you can also use the Windows Registry.
Uninstall programs using Registry
To uninstall a program via the Windows Registry, open regedit and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall
You will see many keys there. These represent the installed programs. They may have long numbers or names.
In case they have names, they would be easy to identify, and in most cases, its UninstallString would point to its un-installers path.
In case they have long numbers, click on each of them till you are able to find the program which you want to uninstall.
Having done that, in the right pane, search for a string value called UninstallString.
Double-click on it. From the dialog box which opens, copy its value.
It will look something like this :
MsiExec.exe /I{B440D659-FECA-4BDD-A12B-5C9F05790FF3}
Next, open command prompt (cmd), paste the value, and hit Enter.
Windows 10 Key Registry Location
If you see a Value data like say –
“C:Program FilesSoftware Nameuninstall.exe”
You may also open the Run box, copy-paste this value, and hit Enter.
The program will commence uninstallation.
If this does not help, you may also try one of these free Uninstallers for Windows.
UPDATE: Bill Pytlovany adds in the comments.
If you have a 64-bit version of Windows, 32 bits apps may be redirected here:
HKLMSOFTWAREWow6432NodeMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall
Hope this helps.
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I need to look up the install location of a product in the registry, based on the GUID product code. Under Win XP the keys of products installed were located at
For example, if I had the GUID {034759DA-E21A-4795-BFB3-C66D17FAD183} I could look up
and there would be a value containing the install location for the product.
However, the Registry doesn't appear to follow this same setup in Win 7 x64. Does anyone know how I can do what I did in XP, but in Windows 7? Thanks.
3 Answers
Just checked my Win7 x64 system and the registry shows an InstallLocation key for most of the entries.
For 32-bit applications installed onto 64-bit Operating System, browse to the following
DiogoWindows Registry Uninstall Key Software
What Can I Uninstall From Windows 10
I dont think you are right about that. Below is screenshot of my Visual C++ redistributables both x86 and x64, as you can see, none of these go to Wow6432Node