Make Windows Components visible into Add/Remove Programs

Not a fan of MSN Messenger? Don’t want Windows Media Player on your system?

But if you’ll go to Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, by default none of Windows XP’s built in programs are visible.

But if you want you can make them visible its just tricky but some what easy also so to make visible windows XP’s built in programs follow the following some steps:

• Go to the drive where XP is installed lets say it is C:

• open the file C:Windowsinfsysoc.inf in Notepad. You should see a section of the file something like this:

[Components]
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4
WBEM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wbemoc.inf,hide,7
Display=desk.cpl,DisplayOcSetupProc,,7
Fax=fxsocm.dll,FaxOcmSetupProc,fxsocm.inf,,7
NetOC=netoc.dll,NetOcSetupProc,netoc.inf,,7
iis=iis.dll,OcEntry,iis.inf,,7
com=comsetup.dll,OcEntry,comnt5.inf,hide,7
dtc=msdtcstp.dll,OcEntry,dtcnt5.inf,hide,7
IndexSrv_System = setupqry.dll,IndexSrv,setupqry.inf,,7
TerminalServer=TsOc.dll, HydraOc, TsOc.inf,hide,2
msmq=msmqocm.dll,MsmqOcm,msmqocm.inf,,6
ims=imsinsnt.dll,OcEntry,ims.inf,,7
fp_extensions=fp40ext.dll,FrontPage4Extensions,fp4 0ext.inf,,7
AutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,au.inf,hide,7
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
RootAutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,rootau.inf,,7
IEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,ieaccess.inf,,7

• is a list of all components installed at the moment. I’ve taken the example of MSN Messenger – the program entry called ‘msmsgs‘, third-last line. You can see the word ‘hide’ highlighted (hide is the string which tells Windows not to display the component in the Add/Remove Programs list).

• Fix this up by simply deleting the word ‘hide‘ like so:

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7

• To this:

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,,7

• Now, after restarting, you should be able to see MSN Messenger in the Add/Remove Programs list.

Imp: If you want to be able to quickly view and remove all components, simply open the sysoc.inf file and do a global find and replace for the word ",hide" and replace it with a single comma ",".