Zapping unwanted bits of Windows XP

USERS OF WINDOWS XP (and Windows 2000) may be frustrated at the seeming impossibility of removing exciting applets such as Microsoft Messenger which pop up seemingly at random intervals no matter how loudly you shout at it.

But help is at hand thanks to tireless work by boffins at the Spinola Institute - there's a secret way of making those pesky hidden applications appear on the remove programs menu.

While you could disable Messenger and its chums in an unsophisticated way by nuking the relevant .EXE files, this method has the advantage of using Windows' own uninstaller which should not only be tidier, but which also gives the process a nice touch of poetic justice.

In its wisdom, MS has chosen to hide selected bits of XP and Win2K from the installer/uninistaller, thus preventing users from getting rid of them. These applications include Messenger, Solitaire, Minesweeper, Pinball and Windows Update, along with more strange and eldritch components such as COM+ and FrontPage extensions.

As is usual with top secret, hidden aspects of Microsoft operating systems, the workaround is simplicity itself, needing only a simple text editor. The offending file is called SYSOC.INF which you'll normally find luring in the INF subdirectory immediately below WINDOWS.

Using Notepad, open %systemroot%infsysoc.inf (normally C:winntinfsysoc.inf for Windows 2000, or C:windowsinfsysoc.inf for XP). This file determines which of the Windows optional components are displayed in the Control Panel "add/remove Windows components" applet. You'll see several lines like this:
Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,HIDE,7
The first part, to the left of the "=", is an identifier for that component. Some are more cryptic than others; in the above example it's obvious that the optional Windows Games (ie, Freecell, Solitaire, Minesweeper) are being referred to. Another line refers to "AccessUtil", which is the Accessibility Utilities component. Most can be figured out relatively easily. For Microsoft Messenger, the line is "MSMSGS". The second part determines the behaviour of that component within the add/remove programs applet. The bit we're particularly interested in is the word "HIDE" towards the end of the line. If this flag is present, then the component in question will NOT be exposed to the end user for removal via the Control Panel. If you want to have the option to remove the component, simply remove the word HIDE. So the example line above becomes:
Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,,7
Be sure not to remove the delimiting commas from the line.

Save the file when you've finished editing it. Take a backup copy just in case. Now re-load the Control Panel->"Add/remove Programs"->"Windows Components" applet. The SYSOC.INF file is parsed anew each time this applet is run, so your changes should be reflected immediately. All being well, you should now see the additional components listed and available for removal.

This method is known to work with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It may also work on the toy operating systems (aka Windows for Playgroups). Usual disclaimers and caveats apply - do this at your own risk. One assumes that Microsoft had a good reason for hiding the ability to remove these components - some of them should be removable with no adverse effects (the games and Microsoft Messenger) but there may be interdependencies that result in unforeseen Bad Things Happening if you remove some of the more obscure components (COM, DTC, Frontpage Extensions). µ