How do I finish removing PowerDVD?

November 26, 2011 6:41 PM

How do I remove the last trace of PowerDVD from my Win7-64 system

My computer has a BD drive and one time I bought and installed PowerDVD in order to see how well it handled them.

I wasn't satisfied with it, and have since found other solutions. So I uninstalled it. The problem is, it's still the default tool for my BD drive when there's a BD in it. If I click the drive, it tries to find and run PowerDVD, and of course it can't, because PowerDVD is gone.

How do I remove that assignment? How do I make it so that the default operation for a BD is "open" instead of "Play with PowerDVD"?

posted by Chocolate Pickle to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Change AutoPlay settings
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:10 PM on November 26, 2011

Also, as a general fix for such:

Windows7 Start Menu => Default Programs =>

Can change autoplay options there, can change file associations to particular programs so when you click on them that program handles it, and can change (a lot of) general "With this program handle this" behavior.
posted by aleph at 7:19 PM on November 26, 2011

Best answer: Sorry, I answered the last part of your question about how to unassociate PowerDVD from trying to play those disks but if you have other remains of PowerDVD cluttering up your system (aside from this issue) you might be interested in a thread on MS about removing PowerDVD from Vista. There's different solutions but one trick is to reinstall it, it sees the old version there, offers to remove it, you click yes, then when it comes back and asks about installing the new version you say "no". There are several users reporting success with that.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itprovistaapps/thread/26fb2484-17a6-40ca-87a7-c730746ab4a4/
posted by aleph at 7:25 PM on November 26, 2011

In windows 7, create a new folder anywhere but the desktop would be convenient.
Rename it:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}


You will then have a link to most of the various tweaks/settings available in Windows 7
posted by 2manyusernames at 7:26 PM on November 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: This isn't about Autoplay; I already have that disabled. It's an association of a program with a type, but it's a device, not a file type.

That's the problem. I know how to change Autoplay, or disable it. And I know how to control associations between programs and particular file types. (For instance, I have "m2ts" associated with ZoomPlayer.)

The problem here is that PowerDVD has, somehow, set itself up to be the default program for a device, and when it got uninstalled it didn't remove that association.

But the device doesn't show up in the listing of file types, because a device isn't a file type.

That "GodMode" thing is pretty cool. I'm going through it now. Under "Folder Options", there's an entry "Change the file type associated with a file extension". Problem is, devices don't appear in that list. PowerDVD itself doesn't appear anywhere on that list; PowerDVD removed all its associations with all file types when I uninstalled it.

But it didn't remove its association with my BD drive. That's what I'm asking for help with.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:01 PM on November 26, 2011

Response by poster: Just wanted to make something absolutely clear: when I put in a BD, nothing tries to run. PowerDVD doesn't try to run. The Autoplay choice for BDs is "do nothing" and that's what happens.

When I right-click the BD drive, there are several choices given:
Play with PowerDVD
Play
Open in New Window
...and two or three others.

"Play with PowerDVD" is in bold face. It's the default choice. If I click the drive, it will look for PowerDVD, and not find it. What I want is to click the drive and have it open like a file system, just like all my other disks.

This has nothing to do with AutoPlay, though, and it can't be controlled from the AutoPlay control frames.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:05 PM on November 26, 2011

Hmm. This sounds like some pesky registry keys aren't being removed. I'm hardly an expert at playing with the registry, but googling "PowerDVD registry key" might yield some results.

In general, searching the registry for PowerDVD should help you find and root out those last remaining keys.

As always, back up your registry before you start deleting or changing keys.

Hope this helps.
posted by ArgyleGargoyle at 8:10 PM on November 26, 2011

Best answer: Chocolate Pickle, that link I posted to the MS site had several solutions. One I mentioned in my posted text, another was to use CCleaner to analyze and remove registry settings as part of a general PowerDVD cleanup. You might want to take a look at it.
posted by aleph at 8:22 PM on November 26, 2011

Response by poster: CCleaner turned out to be the solution. It found 375 garbage registry entries left behind by PowerDVD. Once I removed them all, now the default action for my BD drive is "Open".

Like it damned well ought to be.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:05 PM on November 26, 2011