{"id":35533,"date":"2005-05-26T09:02:07","date_gmt":"2005-05-26T09:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2005\/05\/26\/why-does-add-or-remove-programs-show-a-large-blank-space\/"},"modified":"2005-05-26T09:02:07","modified_gmt":"2005-05-26T09:02:07","slug":"why-does-add-or-remove-programs-show-a-large-blank-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20050526-07\/?p=35533","title":{"rendered":"Why does Add or Remove Programs show a large blank space?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nSome people have noticed that certain programs cause the\nAdd or Remove Programs control panel to create an enormous\namount of blank space.  What&#8217;s going on?\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThese are programs that have bad custom uninstall icon registrations.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf you go to the registry key\n<code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall<\/code>,\nyou&#8217;ll find a list of programs that have registered for appearing\nin the Add or Remove Programs control panel.\nSome of them might have been so kind as to provide a\n&#8220;DisplayIcon&#8221; value,\nthereby saving the control panel the indignity of\n<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/oldnewthing\/archive\/2004\/07\/09\/178342.aspx\">\nhaving to guess at an appropriate icon<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nUnfortunately, if they put a bad icon registration in that registry\nvalue, the result is a bunch of blank space since the control panel\nis trying to reserve space for a bogus icon.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe format of the icon registration is a filename, optionally\nfollowed by a comma and a decimal number.\n<\/p>\n<pre>\nC:\\full\\path\\to\\icon\\file.dll\nC:\\full\\path\\to\\icon\\file.dll,123\n<\/pre>\n<p>\nSince this is not a command line, quotation marks are not necessary\n(although they are tolerated).\nFurthermore, the number\ncan be any value except for <code>-1<\/code>.\nWhy is <code>-1<\/code> forbidden?\nBecause\n<a HREF=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/library\/en-us\/winui\/winui\/windowsuserinterface\/resources\/icons\/iconreference\/iconfunctions\/extracticon.asp\">\nthe <code>ExtractIcon<\/code> function<\/a>\ntreats the value <code>-1<\/code> specially.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf the icon file does not exist in the icon file,\nor if the icon number is <code>-1<\/code>,\nthen the icon specification is invalid and the\nAdd or Remove Programs control panel will reserve an odd amount of space\nfor an icon that doesn&#8217;t exist.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nPerhaps the Add or Remove Programs control panel should be more\ntolerant of invalid icon registrations?\nOr should it stay the way it is,\nadhering to the\n&#8220;Don&#8217;t bend over backwards to fix buggy\nprograms; force the program authors to fix their own bugs&#8221; policy\nthat so many of my readers advocate?\n(Noting furthermore that refusing to accomodate invalid icon registrations\nmakes it look like Add or Remove Programs is the buggy one.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people have noticed that certain programs cause the Add or Remove Programs control panel to create an enormous amount of blank space. What&#8217;s going on? These are programs that have bad custom uninstall icon registrations. If you go to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall, you&#8217;ll find a list of programs that have registered for appearing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-35533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-tipssupport"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Some people have noticed that certain programs cause the Add or Remove Programs control panel to create an enormous amount of blank space. What&#8217;s going on? These are programs that have bad custom uninstall icon registrations. If you go to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall, you&#8217;ll find a list of programs that have registered for appearing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}