Bits from Bill
Removing Windows Movie Maker
What Visual Basic did for non-professional programmers, Windows Movie Maker does for consumers who want to create really cool videos.
Our son Chris in Germany had never liked using a computer. This past holiday season, Santa brought him a new video camera and I pointed him towards Movie Maker. He now thinks computers are cool and yesterday sent his latest creation staring our grandkids Marisa and Tristan. If you’d like to see what he’s learned check out, http://www.billp.com/studio/video/thekids.wmv. What’s really amazing is, his version of Movie Maker is all in German and uses text he’s never seen before. Movie Maker rocks!
Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to remove Movie Maker from Windows. If you have an updated XP SP2 system you can’t even re-install it. If anyone knows how, leave a comment. I’ve been trying to re-install Movie Maker to fix a problem I have with transitions. Even with the help and advice of experts I haven’t been successful.
Windows Movie Maker is a great example of an application which Microsoft could have released as a stand alone application. To “promote” their own media format (.WMV) Movie Maker was included free and is integrated into Windows. This is one of the reasons Microsoft ends up needing antitrust lawyers and wastes their time in court.
posted by Unknown | 12:37 PM
22 Comments:
I've never tried to uninstall MovieMaker itself but since Windows XP is designed to be "Media Friendly", the program is closely integrated with "Windows Media Player".
If you have the early version of MovieMaker you can download the update from Microsoft's download web site.
Otherwise check your "add/remove" applet and be sure the "show all updates" box is selected. This should should show you just what media player updates are installed, and if MovieMaker is not listed in "add/remove programs" then you may have to uninstall it from the registry manually.
Hi Tracy,
The problem is, I don't have the early version. What I have came intergrated with the XP SP2 update. There is no Movie Maker in the Add/Remove even in the Window Component section.
There might be a way to manually remove stuff in the registry but I want to reinstall it. Some suggested XPLite which I think would work to remove it.
The Microsoft Windows Update service apparently knows what I have installed. If that information is stored in the registry then perhaps I could trick update into re-installing it.
Microsoft says Uninstalling SP2 is my only solution. Given all the security releases and XP updates I'm a little skittish about removing SP2.
:)
I'll peek around for update information and see what I can find.
Hi Bill,
I found this post by googling "how to uninstall windows movie maker". Like you, I too have missing transitions and only 2 effects in my WMM. I've tried all the fixes on the various websites, none of them work. I've uninstalled SP2, but it seems WMM is still there.
Did you find a solution to your problem? Please contact me at shuhuang @ singnet (dot) com (dot) sg
Thanks in advance! This problem is starting to bug me big time - I've already spent almost a day in man-hours trying to solve it!!
-Shu
I think I will just give up on Windows Movie Maker and learn more about using my Sony Vegas 7.
Maybe the new Vista will have solved just another of XP's little problems.
IT's really a pain, I used to make alot of fanvideos and other media. Though each time I try to open it, it already encounters a problem. Which I think has to deal with a clip being mispaced or an unsaved project and got really really messed up I'm just tempted to find the program and delete if off the computer.
Here's the link for previous version:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx
Well, people talk about "removing it manually from the registry". How do i do that? I had an old computer on which WMM worked fine, then I got a new computer (same model) but everytime I open WMM it either directly crashes or crashes when I try to start a project or import something. I have the new version but installing it doesn't have any effect...same old crashing WMM. It doesn't appear in my "Add or Remove Programs" list either. I tried deleting the program files and then installing the newer version but the same non-functional WMM came back. What do i do?
Same with me i cant unninstall it from add/remove programs and when i open it up it starts to lagg like crazy and then starts makin my entires comp lagg, its crazy and soooo annoying >.<.
If still interested:
http://getwired.blogspot.com/2005/07/how-to-banish-movie-maker-from-your-xp.html
how to uninstall windows movie maker
1 Open Notepad.exe
Copy the following into it:
@echo off
del "%SystemRoot%\system32\dllcache\*wmm*.dll"
del "%SystemRoot%\system32\dllcache\moviemk.exe"
del "%ProgramFiles%\Movie Maker\*.*"
rmdir /s "%ProgramFiles%\Movie Maker"
pause
2 save it as abc.bat
3 restart your computer in safe mode
4 run abc.bat
5when prompted wheather to delete, type "y"
6when finished restart computer, thats it
AVOID Windows Movie Maker; I just wasdted three hours messing around with it and it will NOT export as an AVI, MPEG or aany other fnk file others can use.
A V O I D
Windows movie maker is the best program that i know of available to make cool movies and music videos with its also the worst one . ive encounterd many problems with it and it all happend suddenly like one day i was able to make some awesome music videos then the next day i can only add a single clip in or somthing then it will crash then later it wont even start up... what the ???? is with that? it like had a gradual downfall like cancer or somthing it just died..
anonymous - it happened suddenly with me too, today. I've read that it happens when other dvd/video/whatever programs you install add other codecs, and this messes up WMM. Crazy!
Movie maker is the epitome of micro-garbage.
I'll be the first to admit that, in the beginning, when I first started using it, it worked fairly well.
I don't require FX an whatnot other than very standard editing capabilities so when it functions it's usually good enough.
Unfortunately, after I used it a while it slowly started falling apart. It has come to the point that now it takes about 10 minutes for it to load where it used to load quickly.
Similarly, ANYTHING I do it in after it DOES load is a very very veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slooooooooooooooooooooooow process now. It has literally come to the point where it would take me a full day to edit say 50 cuts.
It has come to the point where it is completely worthless. It's just wasted drive space now. I have wanted to uninstall it an then reinstall it but as you can see from reading other posts, you can't even do that.
I recommend to ANYONE wanting to edit ANYTHING to just spend a couple bucks and get sony vegas and take the time to learn how to use it. It will be time well spent and the time it takes to learn vegas will be much less than the time you will spend banging your head against the keyboard once Movie Maker quits working.
I finally quit using MM when it started trashing my projects. That's just unacceptable. Most of my stuff is captured from a webcam and posted on youtube as thechurchofdave. I refuse to have anything to do wth a program which literally looses or trashes my performances.
Anyone else who wants to do web cam stuff, I warn you here an now, if you use Movie Faker for long, it will trash your takes, freeze, blink, drop frames, put text in the wrong places and engage in a number of of other ridiculous screw ups which will ruin whatever you are trying to accomplish.
Anyone who uses it and likes it, simply hasn't used it enough yet. The day will come when it ruins everything it touches. The very idea that you can't remove or reinstall it simply and easily is a good enough reason to never use it.
If I had the money right now I would just go buy a freakin Mac for all my video and editing needs. I have used MAcs for post production in the past an it was a horrible idea for me to ever quit doing so. So ultimately it's my own fault for letting Movie Faker ruin my days and nights.
Don't make the same mistake. Get sony vegas or , if you can afford it, go get a MAc.
So you can't uninstall WMM huh? wow. Geez. I can't eve USE it. Every time I try to open it, it closes on me. Before I ca even open up a project or start a new one, WMM closes. I thought, if I uninstall it, then reinstall it, that problem might go away. Can anyone help me with this?
delete (maybe save a copy & rename) the i386 folder, then delete moviemk.dll from system32 folder, then delete the contents of the movie maker folder in program files.
you can't remove the empty folder, but it will be er, empty.
and it won't come back ;)
well, mine hasn't & everything still works ok, except wmm :)
um... every time i try to open it it it works... then 5 seconds later it sends an error message saying it needs to close. i tryed usin different movie edit things but the one i got always had some kinda messed up logo in the center covering up the screen.i got a new camera for my birthday (yesterday aug 22) but i cant edit my movies because of: "DUN DUN DUN" windows movie MAKER!!!!!!!
i want to uninstall movie maker.
any one could?
sould i buy a mac?
i want to uninstall moviemaker but I am not able to do it.It is not listed in add/remove programs. I tried to remove it from program files but it reappeared. what should I do? plz help me.
Years later!! I want to thank Jenni for the removal procedure a bit further back. It worked superbly. Much relief!
However, after reinstalling WMM, I still have some sort of tangle. BTW I'm running Win XP Pro. SP3. In the capture procedure, and also importing video, the second, lower, progress bar does not start and the "Sorry .... Send a report' choice appears. Dead stop!
Further report details go along the line : szAppName: Moviemk.exe szAppVer: 2.0.3312. 0. SZModName:hung app Then another report contents: C:\Docume~1\User\Locals~1\Temp\WERbb6b.dir00\moviemk.exe.mdmp. New line C:\Docume~1\user\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERbb6b.dir.oo\appcompat.txt
That all may not mean a thing to anyone .. but - if it did it may help me!? Please!!
On Windows XP,Windows Movie Maker 2.1 is one of those programs that are bundled with Windows. And so cannot be uninstalled in programs menu. So the only way to uninstall Movie Maker is to delete the file in programs on C/drive. You need to download a tool called Unlocker to do this. This unlocks the program file and then you can delete it.Andrea Borman.
Windows MM is probably the single most rottenly suck program on this tower, I solemnly hate it and, as many likewise disgruntled posters here, would like to remove it entirely---or at least as much as possible w/o further screwing up another Bill Gates screwup (xp sp3) from this OS. Yes, I've used MM successfully on a few occasions with the attendant considerable difficulty normally associated with Microsloth but have no further interest in spending three days to make a 7 minute 47 second documentary as one instance of its rank unreliability---it seems that everybody on this thread has their own mile long script of keystrokes to use to flush WMM down the pipes...but there has got to be a better way such as uninstaller software somewhere. Open for suggestions.
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