GameBanshee Forums

er... i'm trying to install baldur's gate 2, done that alot of times before, never had problems but this time... apparently whenever i try to install it, it uninstalls the game instead. there seems to be a tiny remnant of the game still left in my pc, but i've already deleted everything of it i could, including the folder in the program files directory. What else could i do? help!

Hmm... sounds like when you uninstalled the game, some entries has been left to the registery, and now when you try to install the game again, the installer finds those entries and claims that you have the game on your computer...

As far as I know, there is two ways to get around this problem (without changing computer or formating it...):
1) You must find and delete those entries from registery. Very risky and not adviced if you don't know exactly what to do, since you can mess up with the registery pretty badly...
2) Try to find setup.exe or install.exe or something like that from the BGII cd, that launches the installation only. This way, you could be able to get around the uninstall -thing, and when you have "forced" game to install, the registery entries are also updated, so that those entries now are linked to the new installation...

Not sure how the second one will work with BGII though, since I haven't explored those cds in this purpose and I'm not sure if there is any install.exe or like that which jumps directly to the install...

From the Bioware forums

1.11: [BGII/ToB] - How to manually uninstall BGII: (Back to Top)

1.) Uninstall using the shortcut in the BG2 Start menu or the Add/Remove Programs utility in the Control Panel. The game files should be removed from the user's hard drive and the shortcuts removed from the Start menu.

2.) If step 1 failed, run "baldur.exe" from the CD. It should notify the user that the previous installation attempt failed and that they should try reinstalling the game using the program's Install button.

3.) If step 2 failed, edit the "baldur.ini" file in the directory where the game was installed. Look for the "Installing" key under the "Program Options" section, set it to 1 ("Installing=1"), save the file and repeat step 2.

4.) If step 3 failed, edit the system registry using the regedit / regedit32 utility. Remove the following keys: - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ App Paths \ BG2Main.exe - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall \ {8DAE4336-2B71-11D4-9A6C-006067325E47}

5.) Go to your Program Files directory and find the hidden directory "InstallShield Installation Information" and delete the directory labeled "{8DAE4336-2B71-11D4-9A6C-006067325E47}"

6.) Manually delete all the files and directories created by the previous installation attempts (this should return the system to its state before the original installation attempt) and try again to install from the CD.

wow many thanks! you're terrific!