My add or remove programs list...

[sarahlorrain]

There are a lot of things here that I do not recognize. Also, when I click on them thinking I'm going to remove them, there is no change/remove button. What do I do?

[gerbil]

...polite cough....

[sarahlorrain]

um...what are you *coughing* about? I don't get it.

[gerbil]

Um. nothing.. frog, maybe.. Anyway...
I may be barking up the wrong tree, but perhaps if you navigate to this key in your registry [go Start, run, type regedit and press OK]:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
-then rclick on uninstall in left pane, choose permissions and ensure that the administrator [you, perhaps] at least has Full Control. That should do it.
That fix would apply if most of your add/remove pgms entries were like you describe.... maybe a bit of malware changed it.

[sarahlorrain]

Thanks! I'll try that and let you know whether it worked or not.

[sarahlorrain]

Assuming I'm reading it right, the allow boxes are checked for administrators.

[gerbil]

I think that was my best and only shot, sarah...
[the cough was actually cos I was expecting a list, I didn at the time realise the header was half the post]

[gerbil]

Nope. Googling didn help either. All I could find tht could be of any help is to either restore to a previous date [not good, sometimes] or just go down the list of pgms in that key I gave you, click on culprits and then delete any entry which looks like NoModify or NoRemove [or set those values to zero].
Note that some pgms are listed by those long alphanumeric codes...
Tedious. But that's it. Have you Norton AV?

[gerbil]

Sarah, if you do find a way pls let us know..?

[sarahlorrain]

Next, I tried this:
http://www.winxptutor.com/arpbuttons.htm
And, it didn't work. But, maybe that would work for someone out there someday so I put it in here.