I'm having a problem with my Control Panel Add or Remove Programs section. I'm used to it sitting for a minute or two while it says "Please wait while the list is populated" or whatever, but I can now leave it for an hour or two with nothing happening beyond that message. More so, when I close the window, I can't open it again until I kill the rundll32.exe process in Task Manager. I'm now forced to use a 3rd party app (MyUninstaller) to get rid of stuff.

I've run AdAware, Spybot S&D, and a full F-Prot virus-scan... nothing. Anyone else ever experienced this or know of a fix that I'm too oblivious to see?

Running XP SP2.

try some registry cleaner (for example EasyCleaner - has lots of other usefull stuff on it too, including removing stuff from the uninstall menu), as it sounds like the registry has gotten corrupted for that part..

Tried the proggy, cleaned the reg, and the problem persists.

Try this.


WORKAROUND
To work around this problem, right-click the Add or Remove Programs icon on the taskbar, click Close, and then restart Add or Remove Programs.

To avoid this problem, use the Spuninst.exe utility to remove this security update. The Spuninst.exe utility is located in the %Windir%\$NTUninstallKB840374$\Spuninst folder.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;842253

Beat me to it