January 6th, 2004
(instruction also downloadable below)
The first time after I had installed Microsoft Office 2003, I noticed that whenever I run Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0, a background process is started called
wisptis.exe. Once wisptis.exe has been started, it won't stop unless you kill it or reboot your system.
In general, the ways in which wisptis.exe can get installed on your system:
- installing Journal Viewer via Windows Update
- installing Microsoft Office 2003
So what is wisptis.exe? A quote from TabletPCDeveloper.com:
Well I don't have a Tablet PC and I certainly don't want an unnecessary process eating up my memory resources.
You
cannot get rid of wisptis.exe by renaming or deleting it: Windows File Protection would cause it to reinstall the next time you run Adobe Acrobat.
There is even a rumor about a bug in wisptis.exe itself whereby it keeps part of the current user registry hive locked, preventing updates and eventually resulting in a corruption of the registry hive (which as reported leads to a "
Userenv event 1517" on logging off or shutting down).
Others reported GDI leaks and CPU hogging. I haven't noticed the latter but can confirm that at one point, the number of open GDI handles by wisptis.exe was above 1000, which is unacceptable.
So by and large it seems wisptis.exe can make a thorough nuisance of itself.
To uninstall wisptis and Microsoft's Tablet PC Components on your PC,
you must delete the following registry entries:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\{7F429620-16D1-471E-A81A-114992148034}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\wisptis.EXE
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{04A1E553-FE36-4FDE-865E-344194E69424}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{13DE4A42-8D21-4C8E-BF9C-8F69CB068FCA}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{242025BB-8546-48B6-B9B0-F4406C54ACFC}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3336B8BF-45AF-429F-85CB-8C435FBF21E4}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3EE60F5C-9BAD-4CD8-8E21-AD2D001D06EB}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{43B07326-AAE0-4B62-A83D-5FD768B7353C}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{43FB1553-AD74-4EE8-88E4-3E6DAAC915DB}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{524B13ED-2E57-40B8-B801-5FA35122EB5C}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{632A2D3D-86AF-411A-8654-7511B51B3D5F}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{65D00646-CDE3-4A88-9163-6769F0F1A97D}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{6E4FCB12-510A-4D40-9304-1DA10AE9147C}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{786CDB70-1628-44A0-853C-5D340A499137}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{836FA1B6-1190-4005-B434-7ED921BE2026}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{8770D941-A63A-4671-A375-2855A18EBA73}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{8854F6A0-4683-4AE7-9191-752FE64612C3}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{937C1A34-151D-4610-9CA6-A8CC9BDB5D83}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{9C1CC6E4-D7EB-4EEB-9091-15A7C8791ED9}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{9DE85094-F71F-44F1-8471-15A2FA76FCF3}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{9FD4E808-F6E6-4E65-98D3-AA39054C1255}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{A5558507-9B96-46BA-94ED-982E684A9A6B}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{A5B020FD-E04B-4E67-B65A-E7DEED25B2CF}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{AAC46A37-9229-4FC0-8CCE-4497569BF4D1}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{C52FF1FD-EB6C-42CF-9140-83DEFECA7E29}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{D8BF32A2-05A5-44C3-B3AA-5E80AC7D2576}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{DE815B00-9460-4F6E-9471-892ED2275EA5}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E3D5D93C-1663-4A78-A1A7-22375DFEBAEE}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E5CA59F5-57C4-4DD8-9BD6-1DEEEDD27AF4}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E9A6AB1B-0C9C-44AC-966E-560C2771D1E8}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{EFB4A0CB-A01F-451C-B6B7-56F02F77D76F}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F0291081-E87C-4E07-97DA-A0A03761E586}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Components\BCA32ECD550 E1F4488DBD2A1578ACF8B
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Features\7040110900063 D11C8EF10054038389C\WISPFiles
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Features\7040110900063 D11C8EF10054038389C\WISPHidden
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TpcCom.* (all of them)
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{194508A0-B8D1-473E-A9B6-851AAF726A6D}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{56D04F5D-964F-4DBF-8D23-B97989E53418}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{773F1B9A-35B9-4E95-83A0-A210F2DE3B37}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{7D868ACD-1A5D-4A47-A247-F39741353012}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\1125549C421D34E4DBF1036F62580BE1
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\652A08B235C6DFF4C8CD41B52DE68CA4
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\9B4B5940D4625D64C85532B8CDE3BF4D
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\D656DA4A9E277A34D90D5E6FFA34E827
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\7040110900063D11C8EF10054038389C\Featu res\WISPFiles
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\7040110900063D11C8EF10054038389C\Featu res\WISPHidden
Now you can also safely delete \Windows\System32\Wisptis.exe. Make sure the process is not running; otherwise kill it before deletion.
Fully tested on an up-to-date Windows XP SP1.
Cheers,
Alex