This blog post tells you how I managed to uninstall most of an application when I saw the User Account Control message, ‘This app has been blocked for your protection’.
Warning: Now I’m writing ‘how I managed’, because I’m not sure you should perform the same actions and some files were not removed when I did the steps mentioned below! I’m unsure if I should’ve performed the steps I did. The app is blocked for a reason! You’re to blame for anything you do!
Background
On two computers I wanted to uninstall Hauppauge software and saw the UAC message about the ‘Unwise’ software. Both computers are running Windows 10 64-bit.
Perhaps others are interested in what I did, even though the circumstances will likely be different for them, such as the application, locations etc.
What I did:
- From the ‘Start’ menu, I went to ‘Windows Systems’.
- I right-clicked on ‘Command Prompt’ and selected ‘More’, then ‘Run as administrator’.
- I typed cd\ then pressed enter.
- I went to the ‘Hauppauge’ directory ‘ProgramData’ by typing cd programdata\hauppauge and again pressed the enter key.
- I knew the application name in the directory, so then typed unwise_devicecentral.
- I now needed to open a log file, so browsed back to the hauppauge directory.
- I removed the word INSTALL in the file name box and typed u and then the rest of the log name appeared.
- I opened that file and then I was able to run the Hauppauge Device Central uninstall program.
- On one of the computers, I ran another ‘unwise’ application and opened a different log file to uninstall a second Hauppauge application.
Note: Some files were left behind in the Hauppauge directory!
Conclusion
Not a great blog post, but I decided to tell people about what happened as I’m sure at the time of writing this, people are probably experiencing the same problem daily and might be searching about the issue.