Mysterious progams BL and PH

Wobitancrawfodi · 19 Sep 2021

When I look at programs and features I do not see the programs bl and ph.

When I run wmic product get name, installdate, installlocation, description, version I see the programs, v1.0.0 installed on many PCs.

They are installed on the date I install Windows and third party programs.

Are these viruses? malwarebytes doesn't detect them.

These are the wmic outputs
bl 20210713 C:\Program Files (x86)\My Company Name\My Product Name\ bl 1.0.0
ph 20210713 C:\Program Files (x86)\My Company Name\My Product Name\ ph 1.0.0

Those folders exist but are empty.

This question was asked here; Mysterious Folder in Program Files but never answered.

Bree · 19 Sep 2021

Wobitancrawfodi said:

...They are installed on the date I install Windows and third party programs.
Are these viruses? malwarebytes doesn't detect them....

One of those 3rd party installers would seem to be the likely culprit. Do they all install successfully, or does one (or more) fail?

InstallShield Express is popular software that a programmer can use to create a a Windows installation (setup) routine for their program. The InstallShield Express default installation folder is "[ProgramFilesFolder]\Your Company Name\Your Product Name". The programmer should specify the names to use as replacements for the default "Your Company Name" and "Your Product Name" folders. If they don't, (or something else goes wrong during the installation), you can end up with a "[ProgramFilesFolder]\Your Company Name\Your Product Name" set of folders on your computer.

[RESOLVED] [Pro] What is 'Your Company Name' folder

General Information Settings
InstallShield 2015 Express Edition
...
Specify the value of the Windows Installer property INSTALLDIR, which indicates the destination directory where most of the files of the product will be installed at run time. The default value is as follows:
[ProgramFilesFolder]My Company Name\My Product Name

InstallShield 2015 Express Edition | WebHelp

Wobitancrawfodi · 19 Sep 2021

Thanks @Bree. I understand now
No, there were no program failures that I am aware of.
However, a trek through the registry using My Company Name revealed that the Adobe Photoshop install tried to install something called Sonic wrappers. Never heard of it.

I should stop using photoshop as it's old and I can't afford to go on a subscription model - it was expensive enough when i bought it years ago. I think I got my money's worth by now. There are plenty of other quality free alternatives around.

Looking in the registry I found the uninstall commands for bl and ph. Uninstalled them and checked photoshop. Still seems to work ok. Doesn't appear to affect acrobat reader either.

This will allow you to uninstall bl;
MsiExec.exe /I{2A075BB4-E976-4278-BF3F-E5C6945D84C0}

This will allow you to uninstall ph;
MsiExec.exe /I{185F9795-9663-4F13-9EF9-307A282ADB5A}

And it removes the My Company Name folder.

Bree · 19 Sep 2021

Wobitancrawfodi said:

Thanks @Bree. I understand now....
...I should stop using photoshop as it's old and I can't afford to go on a subscription model - it was expensive enough when i bought it years ago. I think I got my money's worth by now. There are plenty of other quality free alternatives around....

Old is not necessarily bad, I'm still using PaintShop Pro 7.04 - and that's over 20 years old now

(and I've found that it installs and runs just fine in Windows 11)