glad you found the answer and happy with that.
i was not sure that the programs have already been removed from your system ?
the error message that you mentioned make it sound like it has not yet been removed.. or files were not completely removed.. not sure.
get rid of the invalid/orphaned entries in the Add/Remove applet is one thing, remove all the files and registry
entries used by the program are another.
to get rid of the orphaned entries in the Add/Remove applet is easy ->
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/AddRemove.htm
but, to manually remove all the files and registry entries used by the program is not easy,
sometimes easy, and this depends on how the program has been written for and other things,...
reinstall the program then uninstall using the Add/Remove sometimes helps you to completely/correctly uninstall the program. in some cases, if you want to remove the program manually you may need to get an info from the owner of the program to completely remove its files/registry entries..