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Win Explorer search triggers installer

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by blueknight 1 view

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I don't work with desktop systems that much, so this one has me stumped...

I'm running Win 2K Pro (SP4) on my desktop with Office 2000 Professional.

The following problem occurs fairly frequently when I use Windows Explorer to locate a file...

I start Windows Explorer and when I click the "search" button, a window appears to install Visio Professional 2002 SR1 (which is already installed an operational). Other times the installer window doesn't trigger until I begin entering file specs in the "search for fils and folders" box.

I figured something got hosed in my registry, so I completely uninstalled Visio and manually made sure there were no folders left on my hard drive. Then I did a fresh install of Visio successfully. The problem appeared to have been fixed at first, but then reappeared.

How can I prevent the Visio installer from being triggered by Windows Explorer search? This is driving me nuts. I figure it'll take a registry hack, but I don't know enough about the registry to know where, or what, to hack -- but I'm not afraid to do it.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jim

3 replies

by s4iio32423432j

I've been having this problem too. This isn't a pefect solution but it won't bug you anymore. Also, i'm doing this from memory and it bugged me about the enterprise version of visio so you may have to adapt this. In the regedit search for visio.msi but only check the Data box. It will find an entry that will have another value line with it (ie: there will be 2 entries in the right hand pane). The tree key for this was a bunch or random alphanumric characters and it was the only child key of another key whose name i forget, click on this (unknown name) parent key and the right hand pane should have some data about visio, delete this key. So...

--unknown key (<-- delete this key)
|-- 93432j4ji3 (this has the visio.msi data)

Now when i search, windows installer flashes up for a split second then goes away. Not perfect but less annoying.

by blueknight

Another oddity here... the problem has disappeared. Since the consultant we're working with uses MS Project and supplies their files to us in status reports, I've had to install MS Project 2003 on my system. Since then, the Explorer search triggered Visio installer has not come back... and I've done a number of searches.

Your post sounds like it'll do the trick, so I'll keep it handy in case the problem comes back. Thanks

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