palm desktop won't uninstall or reinstall

Hi,
I have a user that has a problem with his zire 72 desktop software.
Whenever he tries to run the desktop, the software demands that he
insert the install cd. Well he misplaced it but if he hits cancel about
5 times , the desktop will go ahead and load and run like it should ,
at least until he exits the program and runs it again. I tried
downloading the latest version to reinstall but it refuses to install
saying newer version is already installed. That is a bug as they are
the same version from what I see but regardless, I then tried to
uninstall the existing version and again it refuses without the orignal
CD (very poorly written software that requires a master cd to uninstall
btw).
Any switches for the download version that will force it to install
even though it "thinks" a newer version is there?

Thanks, Fletch

<fletchb RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1120057399.352165.192190@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
> I have a user that has a problem with his zire 72 desktop software.
> Whenever he tries to run the desktop, the software demands that he
> insert the install cd. Well he misplaced it but if he hits cancel about
> 5 times , the desktop will go ahead and load and run like it should ,
> at least until he exits the program and runs it again. I tried
> downloading the latest version to reinstall but it refuses to install
> saying newer version is already installed. That is a bug as they are
> the same version from what I see but regardless, I then tried to
> uninstall the existing version and again it refuses without the orignal
> CD (very poorly written software that requires a master cd to uninstall
> btw).
> Any switches for the download version that will force it to install
> even though it "thinks" a newer version is there?
>
> Thanks, Fletch
>

Don't know what's going wrong but clearly the installation was flawed in
some way. You don't need the master CD to uninstall, normally, so your
problem makes me think that the original install never finished properly.
Have you tried simply deleting the Palm directory on the host? Maybe move it
to a different directory and then go into the registry and delete all
references to Palm. Of course this may prohibit any subsequent installs to
work without the CD as well. If your running on XP I'd make a system restore
point before I mucked around in the registry just so you can get back if you
need to.

Good Luck
TC