Please help me destroy the last remnant of the Sim 3 on my PC

[sophiarosehips]

I really need help.

Last night I tried to install (from DVD) the Sims 3 Seasons on my PC. We had a brown out in the middle of the installation.

I tried making it run, of course it didn't. So I tried to uninstall. It claimed to have done so, but still shows up in my Add/Remove Programs list, listing 5.7 MB of memory.

I have since uninstalled every Sims 3 game and expansion pack.

I have deleted every Electronic Arts folder I can find, including those in Documents and Settings, Program Files, and any hidden folders (I did a search).

The Seasons ep still shows up in the Add/Remove Programs list, still with 5.7 MB. How is this even possible? When I click on remove, it brings up the blue uninstall window. The status bar gets about ten percent of the way, then it skips to the Finished window, and there is no change in the listing in Add/Remove programs.

I've looked at a web page that gives steps to manually uninstall the Sims 3 (https://help.ea.com/uk/article/manually-uninstalling-the-sims-3), but I cannot find (using search) the folders it lists in the registery. All the other folders are already deleted. Searching for "Sims," "Seasons," and "Electronic" no longer brings up any files.

Please help. I am a Sims addict, it's my one escapist activity. I'm a mom, I work a lot, and I get to spend about one hour a day with my game. I will go nuts if I can't fix this.

I'm running XP (yes, I know it's going obsolete but can't afford to upgrade to Win7 yet). Let me know if you need to know anything else that would be helpful. I will be ETERNALLY grateful to anyone who can help me kill this last 5.7 MB.

Thank you in advance for any replies.

 

[PowerYoga]

likely the game has been removed but its just an entry leftover from somewhere. If I recall you had to uninstall the expansion packs before you remove the actual game because of some strange reason.

If you can check the folder where seasons was installed and see that it's not there anymore, then you can just remove the entry from add/remove programs via a bit of registry hacking.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314481

 

[Jeffg010]

Try installing the game again. Sometimes it will put all the files back on and then you can do an add and remove and get it removed but It does sound like you want to get it installed because you said you are an Sims addict. What I would do is get steam and run it through the steam client, you would better off that way.

 

[sophiarosehips]

Thank you both! Off to try this.

ETA: I love you Anandtechers. You are the absolute best. If I could figure out how to include a smilie owing down to you, I would, but just know, the sentiment is there.

 

[power_hour]

If the reinstall doesn't work, try running chkdsk /F C: (or whatever drive the game was on). Its possible you have some corruption.

 

[Newbian]

The best option would be to format your drive to make sure.

 

[biostud]

you can run regedit to remove any entries from the registry file.

 

[gorcorps]

You could try a program called CCleaner that helps scan your computer of every trace of a program and erase it.