Where are product uninstall keys located in the Registry under Windows 7 x64?

There's something funky going on with my Visual Studio installation and when I went to uninstall it so I could make a fresh install, I ran into problems with the uninstaller as well. When I select uninstall and run the setup wizard it attempts to uninstall for a few minutes before throwing an error and rolling back the setup.

Here's the error log the setup is generating:

[08/09/10,15:04:59] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU: [2] ERROR:Error 1402.Could not open key: UNKNOWN\Components\27BE807B28AA7BE3B80B8D54AB539CD3\4E1DAD7D4F54B2B398A9AE271876CEF4.   Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.
[08/09/10,15:04:59] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU: [2] ACTION FAILURE:Action ended 15:04:59: InstallFinalize. Return value 3.See MSI log for details.
[08/09/10,15:05:10] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU: [2] ACTION FAILURE:Action ended 15:05:10: INSTALL. Return value 3.See MSI log for details.
[08/09/10,15:12:12] setup.exe: [2] ISetupComponent::Pre/Post/Install() failed in ISetupManager::InternalInstallManager() with HRESULT -2147023293.
[08/09/10,15:12:24] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU is not installed.
[08/09/10,15:24:19] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU: [2] ERROR:Error 1402.Could not open key: UNKNOWN\Components\27BE807B28AA7BE3B80B8D54AB539CD3\4E1DAD7D4F54B2B398A9AE271876CEF4.   Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.
[08/09/10,15:24:20] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU: [2] ACTION FAILURE:Action ended 15:24:19: InstallFinalize. Return value 3.See MSI log for details.
[08/09/10,15:24:31] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU: [2] ACTION FAILURE:Action ended 15:24:31: INSTALL. Return value 3.See MSI log for details.
[08/09/10,15:31:37] setup.exe: [2] ISetupComponent::Pre/Post/Install() failed in ISetupManager::InternalInstallManager() with HRESULT -2147023293.
[08/09/10,15:32:20] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU is not installed.

Any advice as to how I can get Visual Studio 2008 off my Windows 7 64-bit system?

I've been through this error a lot of times, sigh...

Why does it happen?

Incorrect removal of software or parts of software can cause this problem,
in my case Microsoft Install Clean-Up Utility caused these problems...

This causes permissions of sub keys of Components to be set wrong.

Where does this happen in the registry?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
--> SOFTWARE
--> Microsoft
--> Windows
--> CurrentVersion
--> Installer
--> UserData
--> S-1-5-18
--> Components

How to fix this automatically?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313222

This might or might not work, try and see if it works in your case.

Another automatic attempt you could try is:

SubInAcl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
SubInAcl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
SubInAcl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
SubInAcl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f

You will need to obtain SubInAcl for that.

If one of these solutions worked for you, praise yourself lucky...

If not, sigh...

How to fix this manually?

The annoying thing to fix this manually is that permissions are not applied recursive in that folder, whatever you try to do you will need to apply the permission changes more than once in order for the permissions to propagate properly.

You can try to do it but it did never work in my case...

• Change the owner first, make sure the recursive thing is checked, apply, close it.
• Then change the permissions, make sure the recursive thing is checked, read, apply, close it.

Process Monitor can help to indicate you what sub keys are still having problems, in this way you don't have to check the log over and over again to see where it still goes wrong. Just reset the filter and then make sure you filter every status except for ACCESS DENIED.

Clear the log and try again. For each key within Components that has permission problems, you will need to adjust the permissions as I described in the bulleted list so that they match the permissions of the Components key. You should then be able to click inside the key and it subkeys, if not, fix the permisiions for the subkeys too.

You will have to repeat this till it's fixed. Yes, it's annoying... :-(

Can you use system restore to go back to a point before you started having issues?

A manual uninstall is usually the last resort, so proceed with caution after exhausting other options:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joy/archive/2008/10/21/how-to-remove-visual-studio-2008-manually.aspx