Cannot Install or Uninstall

Aidron · Post by **Aidron** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 5:45 pm

Decided install IWD2 again recently (I have a weakness for the series) and it was 98% complete when a temporary blackout occurred. What seems to have happened is that the uninstall file/command (I'm not tech savy to be honest) was not installed. At least, that is the only thing I can't find in the file folders of IWD2 that IWD1 has. I've tried these things to correct it, but no luck:

System Restore 4 times. Says it can't be restored.
Add/Remove programs. Says the uninstall file cannot be located.
Install and Uninstall through the setup wizard. Same as Add/Remove programs.
Deleting all IWD2 and then emptied the recycle bin.

The Install button is always grayed out if I try to autorun it. Can't play it either. Even with the CDs (tried disk 1 and 2) in my computer the uninstall command does not appear on the CD. I'm assuming because it installed up to 98% that it is not the CD that is faulty.

Anyone have any suggestions as to how I can remove it and hopefully try to re-install it?

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 6:07 pm

What exactly do you mean by black-out?

Aidron · Post by **Aidron** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 6:20 pm

galraen wrote:What exactly do you mean by black-out?

A thunderstorm caused the power to go out all over the area.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:26 pm

I was afraid that was what you meant. Do you have any surge protection on the power supply to you PC? Did you turn you PC off before the power came back?

There's a possibility that your hard drive may have been damaged, are you having any other problems you haven't mentioned, not related to the game?

Aidron · Post by **Aidron** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:30 pm

galraen wrote:I was afraid that was what you meant. Do you have any surge protection on the power supply to you PC? Did you turn you PC off before the power came back?

There's a possibility that your hard drive may have been damaged, are you having any other problems you haven't mentioned, not related to the game?

Yes, everything is plugged into a surge protector. When the power came back, everything just remained turned off... so I suppose I did not technically turn it off.

I have not noticed anything else unusual. Never attempted a system restore before, so I have no way of knowing if that's because of the recent events or simply not unusual.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:39 pm

Have you checked your drives for errors? Right click the drive(s), c: for example, right click 'Properties', then select the 'Tools' Tab, then select 'Check now...' if you haven't.

It'll take time, and hopefully there won't be any errors. Also check your CD in case that's dirty or damaged.

Kienan · Post by **Kienan** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 9:19 pm

Neither HD errors or messed up CD would explain why Install would be grayed out, though, would it? That's really, really, odd, Aidron, I'd think Install would either be available, or replaced by Play. I've never seen a grayed out Install option when installing a game. Uh, you could always run Setup.exe within the CD, bypassing the splash screen. Oh, but you said you already tried that.

Uh, if you have a friend with it insalled, or another computer, you could install there and compare the directories, perhaps manually copying over the uninstall files to the correct location so they can be found? I'm just totally guessing here, though. Also you could try running a registry edit program and removing any remaining IWD2 registries. Sorry, but I don't currently have my regedit program installed, and I can't remember the name of the one I use. Just google registry edit, if you want to try that.

I hope some of the stuff I've spewed out can help you.

Good luck!
~Kienan.

Aidron · Post by **Aidron** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 10:49 pm

Appreciate all the help and advice. I did check my hard drive for errors (which is what took me so long to respond), but it checked out fine.

But, I was inspired to check the (D

drive where the disk is inserted and check its properties. I found the following. Keep in mind, I have my original IWD1 disk 2 in at the moment as I decided to re-install it and see if I could play it to compare.

ICEWIND2 (D

Properties ---> Hardware ---> Policies:

Enable write caching on the disk

This setting enables write caching to improve disk performance, but a power outage or equipment failure might result in data loss or corruption.

So, I'm assuming, the blackout caused the disk to become damaged and it no longer has the uninstall data on it. Wasn't even aware that was possible, but it's my best hunch for now.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 11:09 pm

OK, from what I gather the computer thinks it is already successfully installed. That why you can't go back a step, correct?

I think you're going to have to root around in the Registery for a bit. Do you have any other games installed that have been made by Black Isle and published by Interplay? Because my methods are going to be a bit severe. I'll discuss a lesser severe option at the end.

1. First, manually delete any presence of Icewind Dale from your computer.

2. Click start, then run, then type 'regedit'. If you can't run that, you're running a lower level user account and you'll have to do it as the administrator. If you're screwed with Windows XP Home Edition like I am (that is, until I get Gentoo running today), that means you may even have to reboot and start up Windows in Safe Mode. Either way, get in there.

3. Make sure 'My Computer' is selected to the left, not one of the directories. Press CTRL+F and type in 'Icewind'. Delete all keys and directories you may find. Press the button on the side to find the next occurence.

4. Do the same thing, but now also remove anything named both 'Interplay', 'Black Isle' and 'BlackIsle' without the space in the middle. This can be a problem if you have other Interplay/BlackIsle games.

5. Try reinstalling the game now.

_
Step 4 can be avoided, but if you can afford to be thorough I think you shouldn't do that. If you can but still find that you need to delete all BlackIsle/Interplay keys as well, remove all their respective games from your computer and reinstall them once your done with IWD2. That's going to take a bit of doing, unfortunately.

Aidron · Post by **Aidron** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:34 am

Tricky wrote:OK, from what I gather the computer thinks it is already successfully installed. That why you can't go back a step, correct?

Maybe. I'm not honestly sure. I'm assuming the uninstall file not being present is what is causing all of the problems, cause no matter what I do it gives me an alert stating that a file with a very long name ending in 'uninstall' or some variant cannot be found.

I think you're going to have to root around in the Registery for a bit. Do you have any other games installed that have been made by Black Isle and published by Interplay? Because my methods are going to be a bit severe. I'll discuss a lesser severe option at the end.

1. First, manually delete any presence of Icewind Dale from your computer.

2. Click start, then run, then type 'regedit'. If you can't run that, you're running a lower level user account and you'll have to do it as the administrator. If you're screwed with Windows XP Home Edition like I am (that is, until I get Gentoo running today), that means you may even have to reboot and start up Windows in Safe Mode. Either way, get in there.

3. Make sure 'My Computer' is selected to the left, not one of the directories. Press CTRL+F and type in 'Icewind'. Delete all keys and directories you may find. Press the button on the side to find the next occurence.

I get to the Registry Editor and it all works out fine until I get to step 3, which I get somewhat lost on. My Computer is selected, I hit CTRL + F, and 'Find' comes up. It can 'Look at' three things: Keys, Values, and Data. If I leave all of them selected four files come up when I search for 'Icewind'. They do not look like they are related to the game (at a glance anyway), being named (Default), aFS, sDI, and finally tDIText. The last one's 'Data' ends in Icewind Dale V4.pdf if that is relevant.

Did any of that make sense?

Also, since I have IWD1 and its expansion installed should I completely remove them from my computer as well?

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 3:17 am

double post, sorry

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 3:19 am

You can try removing anything that relates to IWD2 first. If that's not enough for the installer to work, take the Interplay and IWD1 stuff out as well**. You may find it convenient to investigate the folder structure of the registry as well as you do your searches. For example, if you find a little \interplay\ folder with other stuff in it, you could just delete the entire folder instead of the separate keys inside them. Trust me, you loose nothing you won't get back after a reinstall.

Be very clear about your search queries, lest you delete stuff that doesn't have anything to do with IWD at all. That won't do any harm. Maybe you can think of better queries than I do since I don't own the IWD games.

**But in any case I'd use the regular methods to uninstall those other Interplay/Black Isle games you own (if you come to the conclusion you need to remove them too). Don't start hacking at them through the registry if you don't have to. Only then start deleting those Interplay/Black Isle keys.

Kipi · Post by **Kipi** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 10:36 am

I have had similiar problems several times. The problem is, there is already mentions of the game in the registery, though uninstall doesn't work. The way to reinstall the game is just simply delete the IWD2 folder, then open the cd and manually start the setup.exe (or install.exe, can't remember which one it's in case of IWD2). This way you can manually bypass the autorun's check if the game is already installed or not, and you can install the game. After you have manually started the setup.exe, the registery is updated, and everything should work correctly.

Aidron · Post by **Aidron** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 3:35 pm

Tricky wrote:You can try removing anything that relates to IWD2 first. If that's not enough for the installer to work, take the Interplay and IWD1 stuff out as well**. You may find it convenient to investigate the folder structure of the registry as well as you do your searches. For example, if you find a little \interplay\ folder with other stuff in it, you could just delete the entire folder instead of the separate keys inside them. Trust me, you loose nothing you won't get back after a reinstall.

Be very clear about your search queries, lest you delete stuff that doesn't have anything to do with IWD at all. That won't do any harm. Maybe you can think of better queries than I do since I don't own the IWD games.

**But in any case I'd use the regular methods to uninstall those other Interplay/Black Isle games you own (if you come to the conclusion you need to remove them too). Don't start hacking at them through the registry if you don't have to. Only then start deleting those Interplay/Black Isle keys.

Okay, I searched for Icewind, Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale 2, Icewind Dale II, Interplay, and Black Isle and deleted anything that looked like it related to Icewind Dale II. No point in not being thorough, after all. I then uninstalled the original IWD and its expansions, then deleted anything leftover in its Black Isle folder.

Still no luck. I did notice that when I go to hit 'play' on the autorun, it says it cannot find IWD2.exe due to an error retrieving the path from the registry, and to run the application manually by double-clicking on its icon in Windows Explorer. I tried looking at the disk's drive to find this .exe file, but it's not there as far as I can see - same as the uninstall command. Everything else (install, uninstall) is still as it was before and says it cannot find some uninstall file.

Aidron · Post by **Aidron** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 3:36 pm

Kipi wrote:I have had similiar problems several times. The problem is, there is already mentions of the game in the registery, though uninstall doesn't work. The way to reinstall the game is just simply delete the IWD2 folder, then open the cd and manually start the setup.exe (or install.exe, can't remember which one it's in case of IWD2). This way you can manually bypass the autorun's check if the game is already installed or not, and you can install the game. After you have manually started the setup.exe, the registery is updated, and everything should work correctly.

This was one of my original ideas. If I try to run the setup.exe it will start up, then says it cannot find the uninstall file/command.

I'm starting to think my earlier hunch about the disk being corrupted or data on it being erased is true, unfortunately.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 4:15 pm

Aidron wrote:Still no luck. I did notice that when I go to hit 'play' on the autorun, it says it cannot find IWD2.exe due to an error retrieving the path from the registry, and to run the application manually by double-clicking on its icon in Windows Explorer.

That's odd, that shouldn't be there. If nothing remained, then nothing should point to the existence of a previous installation. Perhaps it's something the installer does. I'm not really sure. Perhaps Installshield, or whatever unpacks the game from the CD-rom also creates a key during installation. That makes a little sense perhaps, as you want to revert to a previous state if you abort any installation procedure. You don't want half a game on your computer.

Well, if the installer (I said Installshield, but there could be others - all commonly used) doesn't store that install key by the name of the game or CD-rom, there's really no way of finding out what is it called. Unless someone else here has a hunch. I wouldn't advice deleting installer related keys. That could have a large effect on many other programs.

You could try an automated registry cleaner tool. They're in some cases good at finding 'dead ends' in the registry, although that may not be the case here since something is still pointing at some or other file. I don't like to use these tools myself because they sometimes muck things up. Try looking at the suggested freeware thread here at the tech forums. I think there are one or two cleaners mentioned that will do the trick. Watch out for malicious software when you're looking for registry cleaners though (another reason why I prefer to clean the registry myself).

Oh, I don't know if anyone pointed this out already, but if you want to scan the disk surface for errors, open My Computer, rightclick on your hard drive, click 'extra' and then error scanner (or something like that, I'm using a different language version). That should get you into the disk scanner. Let it rattle for the minutes/hours it needs to complete the scan and you'll know if your hunch was right.

Bed time.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 5:01 pm

He did that already, on the C: drive at least I believe, not sure if he checked the other drives though. I would check all drives if I'd just had the problems he's having after a power cut.

Aidron · Post by **Aidron** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 6:02 pm

That was my next idea, when I can spare this computer from a bit of work; check drive D for any errors. I'm also considering going out and buying IWD2 again and trying to install that. That would let me know whether it is the disk or my computer for certain I imagine.

Freeware I've had some bad experiences with; seems I always get a virus in spite of my virus protection software. No big deal since my gaming life is usually free of problems (rarely experience bugs or anything), so I'm inclined not to whine. :laugh:

I'll check drive D and report back here. Hopefully, it's error free and it's just the IWD disk that is corrupt since it is more easily replaced.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 8:00 pm

Unless the CDs are scratched or otherwise visibly damaged I wouldn't rush out to buy new ones Aidron. If both your hard drives survived the power cut then I don't know why the CD would be damaged by it.

My initial suspicion was that the hard drive that was being written too might have suffered slight damage, maybe some bad clusters, as a result. If that's the case then running a check on that hard drive should show that, and you can then take the appropriate action.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 11:53 pm

And double posting again, sorry.