Uninstalling Windows Movie Maker in Windows XP

If you've never edited your own movies, or if you have a better-equipped video editor, you might want to get rid of Windows Movie Maker. Sadly, with Microsoft's System-File-Protection mechanism, you cannot simply delete the relevant files from the Program Files folder. Windows will restore the files within a few minutes and Windows Movie Maker will keep working. If you are really stubborn about removing Windows Movie Maker from Windows XP, there is a workaround which will allow you to delete all the concerned files and free-up some space which would otherwise be taken up by Windows Movie Maker.

Removing Windows Movie Maker requires a workaround since Windows considers it an essential part of Windows. Here is the procedure to delete Windows Movie Maker completely from Windows.

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Once Safe Mode starts, Click on Start Menu, then go to Run and type "cmd". This will open up a command prompt where you will be entering a few commands:

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Type these commands one-by-one and you will completely remove Windows Movie Maker.

• del "c:\system32\dllcache\*wmm*.dll"
• del "c:\system32\dllcache\moviemk.exe"
• del "c:\Program Files\Movie Maker\*.*"
• rmdir /s "c:\Program Files\Movie Maker"

Make sure to include the double quotes around the path of the files, and replace c: with whichever drive Windows is installed on. Once done, just restart your computer. You should have successfully removed Windows Movie Maker from your Windows installation.

Removing Windows Movie Maker, while possible, can be dangerous if you do not take care while typing the above commands and delete anything important by mistake. Remember that the system32 directory contains the core of Windows system files and any important files being deleted will cause big problems. If in doubt, make sure to backup everything before you start with this procedure.