Wednesday, March 16, 2005
By: Matthew Doucette
Due to a known bug, sometimes Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) will not uninstall. It occured with my installation of DAP. I tried both from the Add or Remove Programs location or the Start menu location, and neither worked.
Uninstall DAP - Solution #1 of 2:
Difficulty: Easy.
Reboot, redownload DAP, reinstalled DAP, reboot, and finally, uninstall DAP. I tried this, and the uninstall worked perfectly without the need of Solution #2 (which I had resorted to earlier). This concept, reinstalling an application to help uninstall it, is an alternative solution which can work for many programs that have a faulty uninstall due to a corruption of the install. This will not work for programs that purposely disable their uninstall. Fortunately, DAP's uninstall problems are due to a bug, and are not on purpose.
Be sure to always reboot before and after installations/uninstallations to ensure there is no corruption in the install/uninstall caused by the requirement of a reboot that it never gets. In my case with DAP, I did not reboot after uninstalling my older version of DAP before installing my newer version. Certain similar files that were the same name and in the same location got confused upon next reboot, where the uninstall of my older version of DAP actually deleted files from my newer version, thus causing corruption. A reinstall fixed the corruption and the uninstall worked.
Uninstall DAP - Solution #2 of 2:
Difficulty: Medium.
This solution appears valid for all versions of DAP since it uses the uninstall log file that is created via DAP's install. I have documented how to perform the uninstall in this thread:
How to uninstall Download Accelerator Plus (DAP)
DAP Browser Integration Still Enabled?
After uninstalling DAP, sometimes the browser integration is still enabled. This makes the browser pass the downloading of the file to DAP, which no longer exists, and causes a popup error.
To fix this, reinstall DAP, go to the options, and uncheck "Make DAP my Default Download Manager", uninstall DAP.
Thanks to Triton of TechSpot (forums) for posting this solution in their "How to uninstall DAP?" thread.
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About the Author: I am Matthew Doucette of Xona Games, an award-winning indie game studio that I founded with my twin brother. We make intensified arcade-style retro games. Our business, our games, our technology, and we as competitive gamers have won prestigious awards and received worldwide press. Our business has won $190,000 in contests. Our games have ranked from #1 in Canada to #1 in Japan, have become #1 best sellers in multiple countries, have won game contests, and have held 3 of the top 5 rated spots in Japan of all Xbox LIVE indie games. Our game engines have been awarded for technical excellence. And we, the developers, have placed #1 in competitive gaming competitions -- relating to the games we make. Read about our story, our awards, our games, and view our blog.