The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility (MSICU.exe, MSICUU.exe, MSICUU2.exe) was a
software utility for the
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
designed to solve uninstallation problems of programs that use the
Windows Installer technology. It looks up registry references and files related to
Windows Installer that were installed by various programs, and forcibly wipes invalid entries out. It works in all 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
first released the utility in 1999 to help
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
-based computers clean up installed programs that would either refuse or pretend not to remove themselves from the "add/remove programs" feature in Microsoft Windows.
The utility only changes registry values and files associated with Windows Installer and does not remove any files associated with installed programs. Only users who have logged in as
system administrators may run the utility.
For developers who have problems with the Windows Installer automatically repairing their own installations on developer machines (when the developer has manually updated some of the binaries), this utility is ideal to remove the Windows Installer information whilst leaving the actual installation intact.
Microsoft retired the Windows Installer CleanUp utility on June 25, 2010, due to conflicts with
Microsoft Office 2007. A Program Install and Uninstall Troubleshooter for
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...
,
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...
,
Windows 8.1
Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...
and
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
was instead made available.
References
External links
*
Windows components
Utilities for Windows
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