can't uninstall Ace Mega Codecs Pack

[mortee]

Hi,

I have the following problem: I have some old version of Ace Mega Codecs Pack installed on a WinXP SP2 computer, which I'd like to uninstall in favor of a different, more recent pack. The problem is that when I try to uninstall it, it will start the process, and then pops up an error message saying:

"Invalid class string."

When I close the message window, the uninstaller just hangs there idle, with any controls disabled - I have to kill it from Task Manager.

Does anyone have an idea about what the problem may be, and how I could get aroung it?

thx
mortee

[Chewy]

http://www.free-codecs.com/reviews/ACE_Mega_CoDecS_Pack.htm

looks bad for the new version also

[soup]

You can try uninstalling it through Tools in CCleaner.

Edit: There is also HiJackThis, Open Misc Tools Section, Open Uninstall Manager.

[LT. Columbo]

if you MUST use Ace for whatever reason, 6.01 is safe. you shouldn't need this anyway though. delete whatever you can manually and forget about it unless it causes problems. maybe someone has a way to remove it...

[mortee]

Well, thanks for the replies. In fact, I'm not bound to ACE at all. I was about to switch to k-lite (it seems to be quite regularly maintained), and on install, it complained about ACE being installed on the box, which refused to uninstall for the above mentioned reason.

Thanks for the pointers to cleanup tools - those seem to be really useful stuff, I saved them for later, but in this specific case neither could help me. All they could do was to remove the uninstall entry for ACE from the registry, but not actually clean up after it.

In the end, I just searched the registry for any driver entries with files from the ACE installation dir, I deleted them (unregistering the components using "regsvr32.exe /u" didn't succeed from some reason), and then I removed the ACE directory itself. After that, I considered the pack to be mostly cleaned up, and now k-lite seems to work as expected.

Again, thanks for the tips and suggestions.

[soup]

I have taken a liking to the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack C/W the Codec Tweak Tool. BTW, glad it's okay now.

[olyteddy]

Why do you need a 'Pack' anyway? I installed FFDSHOW and other codecs only as needed. Cleaner and less chance of interactions.

[anonymez]

Why do you need a 'Pack' anyway? I installed FFDSHOW and other codecs only as needed

exactly. taking a look at what's contained in the k-lite pack here, all i see are redundancies. estimate ~98% of that crap isn't needed. the "Ace" pack is even worse.

LOL and they call it a "professional edition"

[fozziebear]

exactly. taking a look at what's contained in the k-lite pack here, all i see are redundancies. estimate ~98% of that crap isn't needed. the "Ace" pack is even worse.

LOL and they call it a "professional edition"

Elaborating further on this, which codecs are really necessary. I do have the K-Lite pack and I agree , going through all the posts here, it is full of unnecessary @#$#$%..
Or is this "too off topic "

[ppnaive]

thx for sharing those information, it's very useful.