In making some copies of BGII for a friend, i needed to test them. I went to my add/remove programs control panel and uninstalled the copy I had already installed so I could test a reinstall. I pop in the copied CD and the autorun acted as if it was still installed.
I've had to get arond this before with a few games, so I just go into My Computer, open up the CD and just run the setup.exe but this time all it gives me is a "uninstall? yes/no" option. I ran a complete search on my machine for "bg2" and "baldur" ... both of which turn up nothing. I've also tried putting in the original CD to make sure the copy wasn't messed up and it yielded the same result.
Looking back into the add/remove programs panel, there's still the entry for BGII that simply won't go away no matter how many times I click to uninstall.

Any clues as to why the game still thinks it's installed and how I can fix this problem?

What happens when you hit yes when it prompts you to uninstall?

it "uninstalls" and absolutely nothing changes... still asks me if i want to uninstall when i run setup.exe

BioWare's SysInfo wasn't helpful at all...
"Baldur's Gate 2 - Shadows of Amn was not detected on your computer. If you are having problems starting Shadows of Amn, try reinstalling the game."

After playing NWN for years, have learned to ignore BioWare as much as possible.

Might be some .dll problem. Or, since that SoA is an expansion, might need to uninstall the original BGII also or something

SoA is the subtitle to the original, the expansion, Throne of Bhaal (which I also have) is uninstalled (through the same method) as well

Ahh, ok. Never heard of it referred to that before, which is why I forgot. Remember it on the box now.

Sometimes, uninstalling games using the Add/Remove programs can fuck it up. That is why you should always use the game's own uninstall.

Am thinking it might have to do with some reg key or something. Best bet, contact tech support. BioWare is fairly good at getting back to you about stuff like that, but Atari (they made NWN and all the other D&D games recently) sucks ass.

sent an e-mail to bioware tech support (who only work M-F 9-5)... and doesn't add/remove programs use the installed uninstaller?

btw my Throne of Bhaal knows that it was uninstalled and will even install despite there being no original game... lol

Newp, not always. I did that once to uninstall Diablo2, and it fucked it up. Couldn't install or uninstall until I formatted.

well i figured it out...

had to go find this beastly long-named folder buried in the registry and delete it

- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall \ {8DAE4336-2B71-11D4-9A6C-006067325E47}

O.o

Figured it was a buried reg key somewhere. Go me