I have a strange program in my control panel called “BDE adminstrator” which is the borland database engine see screenshot and link at the bottom . When I click on it in control panel nothing happens.
There is no option in control panel to remove or revo uninstaller. I have scanned my computer with malware bytes, spybot and an antivirus scanner. It may not be a virus/malware and it might have been installed when I was trying to install a software program made in the late 90s/early 2000s, since it looks like an out of date software. I have no idea how to remove it and a guide I found to remove it from system32 but the file isn’t there and its not in the registry either under borland so I have no idea what to do.
Borland is a name that hasn’t been used in a long time. These days all the Borland tech belongs to Embarcadero. So it may be a really old piece of software that would install the BDE or else it should be Interbase.
Yes like I said I installed piano software from the 90s or early 2000s so I think thats how it got there. In the worst case I can just leave it there until I reinstall windows again but I was hoping someone knew how to remove it
Well if your piano program is using the underlying embedded database (Borland Database Engine) you cannot remove the database engine without breaking the software that relies on in. If you uninstall the piano software, it may also remove the BDE, but then again, probably it will not. (It’s usually installed as “common” software in the case that you have multiple programs that rely on it.)
Which, to be clear, may well eliminate the entry in Control Panel, but is not going to uninstall the software. It’s more like putting a rug over a stain on the floor.
I rather doubt the program is installed any longer if Revo Uninstaller isn’t seeing it. I thought the user’s question was about removing the control panel entry.
What makes you think the program is installed at this point?
Because if it came as part of something else, then it would have been installed with a parallel installer package. The installer for his piano app would have launched the BDE installer in /quiet mode (so no UI was visible) and it would just make the Control Panel entry and dump the BDE executables (DLLs probably) right into the Windows folder (which is the way such things were done in the olden days.)
Thank you for the replies but like I said in my original post I tried to delete the file in system 32 but it’s not there, there is no bdeadadmin.cpl file. The file for control panel entry must exist somewhere although which would presumably delete it in control panel if I found it.
Does the Control Panel applet actually launch? If it does then you’re probably just not seeing the CPL file for some reason. If it doesn’t launch then I don’t know what’s going on, because I don’t think there would be another way to see it in the Control Panel.
You could try this, as an administrator:
Bring up a CMD window and do
C:
CD \
DIR /A:h /S *BDE*.CPL
and see if you see any CPL files with BDE in them anywhere on your whole HDD. Alternatively try
DIR /A:h /s *BDE*
to look for any file with BDE in the name.
Here’s an example from my system which finds an unrelated file
C:\Users\Paul>cd \
C:\>dir /a:h /s *bde*
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 2D68-7A17
Directory of C:\Users\Paul\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Credentials
2017-Nov-11 09:20 AM 880 97A6A850B57935BDE80B6AE4E2FDB2E8
1 File(s) 880 bytes
...
NO! Those are unrelated files that happen to have the adjacent hexidecimal letters B D and E in them. Specifically those files are backups from your registry to allow for recovery.
It’s unclear what’s going on on your system. It doesn’t seem fatal in any way, just a bug left behind by an old program with a broken installer. I wouldn’t worry about it further unless it actually somehow starts causing grief.
Good thing I didn’t delete them lol. Yeah I figured it would be too hard to delete it, it’s weird that they would install a program that is hard to uninstall and is useless. That’s why I thought it was a virus at first. I guess I’ll just keep it there and when I do a clean install again it will be wiped out
“…from the 90s or early 2000s”. I don’t think it would have been the only program from that era to install something that was apparently useless and impossible to uninstall. Standards were different then.
