Can’t Uninstall Bing Bar?

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Having recently upgraded to Windows 10 I’ve been trying to remove some of the features (sic) that I don’t use. One of these is Bing. I have switched to Google for searching as the default and disabled Bing in my browsers. So the other day I noticed it in my list of programs so since I’m not using it, I attempted to uninstall but I can’t. This really annoys the heck out of me. See below.

43162-uninstall

I receive this innocuous message:

43163-cant-run

The “learn more” just tells you that the app you are trying to run (the uninstall) is incompatible. Yeah that was helpful.

I’ve searched the Internet (using Google) extensively and many others have this issue. Most responses tell you how to disable it (done that), some tell you to try uninstall from add/remove (which doesn’t work), some tell you how to remove with third party products (hesitant to do that), others tell you to install the bing bar again and remove it (it doesn’t work same error installing), some tell you how to hide it with Windows Power Shell, and some go into complicated registry hacks for Windows 8.1 but not Windows 10. So I thought I would ask the experts here at Windows Secrets … How the heck do you uninstall this Bing Bar or can’t you?

You might ask – why do you care? It’s just annoying to me when someone dictates to me what I can or cannot do on my PC that I’ve spent money on. It stares at me taunting me every time I go into add/remove programs … “you can’t touch me”. 🙁

Note: I had issues upgrading to Windows 10. 80070005 errors at Windows 10 upgrade required me to clean install Windows 7 and then perform the upgrade to Windows 10. So since this was a relatively clean Windows environment I don’t think its anything to do with Windows itself. But I could be wrong. Any suggestions including get over your obsession to remove this bing bar are welcome.

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Not sure why you are getting the incompatible error message given http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-makes-it-harder-to-break-up-with-bing-in-windows-10-critics-cry-fowl-226988 so perhaps the best you can do is to just disable it.

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I don’t have Bing bar on my Win 10 (don’t know why), but I do have Bing desktop – whatever that is. Have you tried 3rd party uninstallers – I use Geek Uninstaller for example?

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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some tell you how to remove with third party products (hesitant to do that), others tell you to install the bing bar again and remove it (it doesn’t work same error installing), some tell you how to hide it with Windows Power Shell, and some go into complicated registry hacks for Windows 8.1 but not Windows 10. So I thought I would ask the experts here at Windows Secrets … How the heck do you uninstall this Bing Bar or can’t you?

Obviously Bing Bar was installed prior to your upgrade to Win 10. I did a clean install of Win 10 rather than an upgrade so I can’t guarantee that this will work (as I have no pre-installed apps to test on)… but it is a standard method of un-installing software if you don’t want to use a third-party un-installer tool… and you’ll be no worse off if it doesn’t work. 🙂

It involves using the Registry… but don’t worry. You won’t be making any changes to the Registry (promise!), just seeing if some required information is stored there.

As I don’t have Bing Bar installed, I’m going to be using another Microsoft app instead as an example – in my case, Microsoft DVD App – so I can show you screenshots.

(It also looks like a lot of steps… but it’s not. I’ve just chosen to describe each step in detail in case I need to use them again somewhere else. 🙂 )

1. In the Search the web and Windows text box to the right of the Windows Start button, type (but don’t Enter) regedit.

2. When regedit appears as a Run command under Best Match), right-click on regedit and choose the Run as administrator option from the context menu:
43164-_2

3. Click on the Yes button of the User Account Control (UAC) dialog that appears to dismiss the prompt.

4. When the Registry Editor window appears, left-click on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key in the left-hand pane to highlight it:
43165-_4
Click to enlarge

5. Scroll down within HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE until you get to the following sub-key in the left-hand pane:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall
(If the forum’s software splits the text in the line above, just ignore the split.)

As you go, you will need to expand each sub-key by left-clicking on the little arrowhead to the left of them, i.e. the arrowhead to the left of the SOFTWARE sub-key, then the arrowhead to the left of the Microsoft sub-key, and so on…

6. Left-click on the arrowhead to the left of Uninstall to expand the sub-key.

7. You may be lucky and see Bing Bar (or BingBar) in the list. More likely you won’t see it in the list, because it will be hidden within what are called UUIDs (Universally Unique IDentifiers that are strings of characters and numbers). In this case, just left-click on each UUID in turn in the left-hand pane until you see Bing Bar as the DisplayName in the right-hand pane. (You should also see 5.0.1449.0 as the DisplayVersion underneath the DisplayName sub-key.

Note: From an internet search I believe Bing Bar v5.0.1449.0 has a UUID of {08234a0d-cf39-4dca-99f0-0c5cb496da81} so look out for this in the list of UUIDs.

8. Once you’ve identified the correct sub-key for Bing Bar, double-click on the UninstallString sub-key in the right-hand pane:
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Click to enlarge

9. Use Control+C to copy the UninstallString value to the Windows Clipboard then left-click on the Cancel button to dismiss the Edit String dialog.

10. Close the Registry Editor. (See, I said we weren’t going to make any changes. 🙂 )

11. Right-click on the Windows Start button and select Command Prompt (Admin) from the options menu
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Click to enlarge

12. Dismiss the UAC dialog by clicking on the Yes button.

13. When the Command Prompt window appears, use Control+V to paste the UninstallString into the dialog (or right-click in the window and choose Paste from the context menu) then press the Enter key:
43168-_13
Click to enlarge

If all goes well then Bing Bar will be uninstalled using the built-in MSIEXEC uninstall command with Bing Bar’s UUID.

Hope this helps… please let us all know how you get on.

(PS – If it doesn’t work then we’ll have to do a manual uninstall… which will involve making a simple change to the Registry, as well as removing some files/folders.)

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Rick… thank you for such a detailed answer.

Apologies … I should have looked at this thread I started sooner. I happened to see Bing Bar installer today and tried remove it and then remembered I had asked this question here.

You instructions did not work but they were very useful. i.e. I didn’t know about the right click on the start for command prompt admin.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWOW6432NodeMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall{08234a0d-cf39-4dca-99f0-0c5cb496da81} is the location of bing bar on my PC

The uninstaller string shows C:Program Files (x86)Bing Bar InstallerInstallManager.exe /UNINSTALL which results in the same error from the standard uninstall in the control panel.

So I’m going to uninstall manually and will detail later in this thread.

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Hi I also would advise a 3rd party

OP wrote:

some tell you how to remove with third party products (hesitant to do that)

… hence my post how about to avoid third party products.

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I feel mach safer using a 3rd party uninstall program then advising a member to use regedit to remove a program in the registry.

If you read my first post you’ll see that I didn’t advise the OP to use regedit to remove a program. I was at pains to reassure the OP that no changes were going to be made to the registry.

Good to hear that you’re very familiar with regedit but many people aren’t, hence my step-by-step approach to just obtaining required information from the registry.

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Hi Rick! Search in registry shows no signs of Bing Bar after uninstalling it. Now will wait and see if W10 tries to put it back on my PC.

It won’t. Just make sure any additional programs you install don’t put it back.

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Hi dj! Here’s my question! Should I also get rid of all this Bing crap that W10 put on me!
1,636 items about Bing found with Search Everything. That’s a lot of crap!

Please don’t hijack the OP’s thread. Your screen shot shows nothing to do with Bing Bar (which your previous posts say you have removed successfully). If you want advice about Bing itself, please start a new thread.

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Please don’t hijack the OP’s thread. Your screen shot shows nothing to do with Bing Bar (which your previous posts say you have removed successfully). If you want advice about Bing itself, please start a new thread.

To all: once a post hijack escalates such as this one did, please hit the Report button on the source post of the hijack, if you can work out which it is. We’ll try to sort things out then.

Thanks 🙂

[Apologies to those with reduced post counts – excluding the hijacker of course.]

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It’s a shame that didn’t work. Instead of a manual uninstall, have you considered using CCleaner or RevoUninstaller. I know you expressed reservations about using 3rd-party tools in your original post but both of these are available as portable versions, so there’s no need to install stuff just to get rid of persistent stuff you don’t want.

If you do decide to carry out a manual uninstall, don’t forget to delete the uninstall registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWOW6432NodeMicrosoft WindowsCurrentVersionUninstall{08234a0d-cf39-4dca-99f0-0c5cb496da81}

Hope this helps…

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So in the end I managed to uninstall the darn thing using JV16 Power Tools X. It has an uninstall function. I had sworn I wasn’t going to run registry tools after the Windows 10 upgrade but I did.

I started to find all the registry entries for bing bar … there are lots. I had tried this based on the previous instructions: C:Program Files (x86)Bing Bar InstallerInstallManager.exe /UNINSTALL it was found in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWOW6432NodeMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall{08234a0d-cf39-4dca-99f0-0c5cb496da81}

I also found this:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionInstallerUserDataS-1-5-18Products9E7717F445B24B84AADF30AFF1785A24InstallProperties
MsiExec.exe /I{4F7177E9-2B54-48B4-AAFD-03FA1F87A542}

Neither uninstall from admin prompt worked.

After seeing all the entries for big bar (seems to come with MSN suite)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWOW6432NodeMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall{4F7177E9-2B54-48B4-AAFD-03FA1F87A542}
HKEY_USERSS-1-5-21-1529725166-4235013800-1314586339-1000SOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionAppCompatFlagsCompatibility AssistantStore
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTInstallerProducts9E7717F445B24B84AADF30AFF1785A24
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTWow6432NodeCLSID{d2ce3e00-f94a-4740-988e-03dc2f38c34f}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesInstallerProducts9E7717F445B24B84AADF30AFF1785A24
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesWOW6432NodeCLSID{d2ce3e00-f94a-4740-988e-03dc2f38c34f}

… I decided to use the tool’s uninstall and received the same error but the tool forced the uninstall.

I ran the registry clean up and compact function after. PC is significantly improved at startup.

Thanks again Rick

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