Question : Roxio installed on Dell laptop - won't un-install or run

A user has a Dell laptop which is about 1 month old.  Roxio Creator Plus came pre-installed on his laptop, and the cd rom was shipped as well.  I am suspicous that this user did something over the weekend that screwed up his Roxio install, so today, when he started Roxio, it asked for some file which is located on the install CD ROM.  We direct it to the file, but it always errors out.  We can't even re-install the application from CD because it errors out too when it determines that Roxio is already installed on the computer.  Lastly, under add/remove programs, the Roxio software has no "change" or "remove" options...just white empty space!  So, we can't un-install...we can't re-install, and we can't run the software without it trying to find some file that doesn't work anyay.  

Without going to the effort of troubleshooting the specific error messages and such, I just want to completely remove Roxio from the machine.  There are third party add/remove software utuilites, but I am wondering if they will just mess things up further, or if they are worth trying?  If so, should I manually remove everything in reference to Roxio under the program files folder first?  Then use the utilites to "clean" it out of the windows Add/Remove Programs area?

Thanks for any advice.

Answer : Roxio installed on Dell laptop - won't un-install or run

I'm fairly sure Roxio identifies itself through this registry directory:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Roxio\Easy CD Creator (or whatever specific program they call the Pro version these days)

So if you export it, then try deleting it, it should re-install without a fuss.

HOWEVER, BE CAREFUL to only stick to the exact program name and NOT TO DELETE Roxio Shared or any other registry directory under Roxio; I know that Microsoft's Explorer CD burning is licensed Roxio technology and I believe that some of those directories may be needed by Windows. Not that it would make a very big deal considering you would be exporting (read: backing up) the registry directory before deleting it.

Good luck!
Mo