Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC?
Wednesday, 29 December, 2004
I had Half Life installed on my PC, and when I uninstalled it I decided to get rid of ‘Sierra Utilities’ which was installed with it. I got a few error messages asking if I wanted to delete some things, and I clicked ‘No’ to all of them because I didn’t know what they were.
The hard drive kept working for ages, and when I checked later all my programs were gone, or not working. I had to format and reinstall everything to get my system working again!
What the hell is this all about? Did I do something wrong?
Frank DeScuteion, Melbourne, VIC
 Damn eh? Welcome to the late ‘90s!
It sounds to me like you’ve used an original, unpatched version of Half Life, and never had it updated. It’s my understanding that this ‘problem’ was corrected with the version 1.0.0.6 patch for Half Life. And a ‘problem’ it is indeed.
Sierra Utilities gets installed along with Half Life. By default, the installation directory is C:\sierra\Half-Life . If you use the default, there’s no problem. But if you choose a custom location for the programs install, the results can be disastrous. If you choose your main program files directory, the results can be catastrophically disastrous, as you’ve found out.
When Sierra Utilities was written, some GOOSE assumed that no-one would change the install location for the program. He (or she) then went on to make the ridiculous mistake of hard-coding the uninstall routine to remove the parent directory when to program was uninstalled. If that parent directory is anything other than C:\sierra then you can kiss goodbye to whatever else is in it!
With the recent rise in interest for the original Half Life game, it’s timely to warn others about the possibility. If you have the original Half Life installed, check that it has been updated, and if you’ve installed it anywhere except the default location, then be careful. You can obtain Half Life patches from Gamespot
Hope that helps someone else avoid disaster, Frank. It’s bad luck that you didn’t find out in time to avoid it yourself.
Cheers, and commiserations, Terry O'Shanassy
 Reader solutions
fredPosted: 17/06/2009 re: Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC? I'm screwed ! uninstalling Sierra Utilities has just killed my apache server, my zend configuration, gomplayer, adobe reader, firefox etc...
This is a message for those who are smarter than me. Just delete without the uninstaller, then use a registry cleaner or whatever. BUT DON'T USE THIS UNINSTALLER !!!
(Thanks Fred. -PZ) Fr. Jim RosselliPosted: 22/05/2009 re: Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC? It seems the best way to deal with this is simply to avoid Sierra
Utilities. If their software poisons computers, they need to
take some responsibility.
They need to create a fix that will permit a safe uninstall of their software, and include that
fix in all future software. Until
they do that, their stuff is malware, and their company's
products should be avoided like
any other malware should be.
bishoyPosted: 20/01/2008 re: Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC? bishoy_hay2003@yahoo.com is very nice boy pleasee rite tyman1180Posted: 18/06/2007 re: Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC? i just uninstalled sierra trophy rivers and i want to get rid of sierra utilities but i cant update it and its located in the C:/ so am i screwed!
Russell CollmanPosted: 11/05/2007 re: Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC? I would like to sue Sierra after the utilities programe deleted my Games folder. georgePosted: 04/01/2007 re: Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC? hey i was jsut looking through my add remove programs list and found sierra, and since i didn't know what it was i googled it first just before i uninstalled it, and a good thing i did. i checked my c drive and it was there so that's okay at least, however, i do remember trying to change it to program files, but i got a warning saying that anything other than the c drive could cause a huge fault as it was a dos based game or something. that's why i left it where it wanted to live. :S Posted: 03/01/2005 re: Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC? Wow, I just ran into this problem as well. I installed Half-Life over the holidays for some nostalgia gaming, then I uninstalled it a few days later. Uninstalling Sierra Utilities obliterated my 'Program Files' directory and took the better part of a day to restore. Unfortunately, the problem does not seem to be restricted to versions prior to 1.0.0.6 as I had fully patched Half Life with to the latest client version (1.1.1.0) with hl1110.exe.
There's no good solution to this problem, but if I ever install Half Life in the future, I'll be putting it into the default directory. Carlo SchisanoPosted: 02/01/2005 re: Why did uninstalling Sierra Utilities kill my PC? Hey Terry, guess what? That GOOSE at Sierra is improving even though he still has more to learn!
Sierra also do the Hoyle Casino games and I have last year's one. Within that, you have the FaceMaker option built-in which allows you to build your character's face through already designed options.
If you have multiple partitions and decide you want to install it to another partition other than C:\, it will install the program to the partition, but still only allow itself to install Facemaker to C:\, and therefore the Facemaker will not work. You will then have to create an identical file tree structure on the relevant partition for it to work! |