the OC junk being placed on your hard drive and in your registry
-app103
@April - is there a manifest for what OC installs available anywhere? I've got some software audits coming up. Be interesting to check and see how widespread the actual deployment is. I'm sure my clients would be interested too.
-40hz
Each install leaves an OpenCandy folder containing a text file and OCSetupHlp.dll, usually within that application's folder. (there can be multiples of these if the user has installed more than one OC powered app and the folder may be elsewhere, separate from the app that installed it, if it was from an older installer)
Additionally, the registry entries locations vary, depending on where the developer decided to put them...somewhere within their own app's key.
Some examples from Microsoft's site:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\ADatumCorporation\OpenCandy
HKLM\SOFTWARE\ADatumCorporation\OpenCandy\Completed
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ADatumCorporation\OpenCandy
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ADatumCorporation\OpenCandy\Completed
A developer could also choose to list them under his own app's keys without any mention of OpenCandy.
The actual keys would be listed as "OCN" and "VOCV"
So, you would have to scan all files & folders on a user's machine for an "OpenCandy" folder and/or "OCSetupHlp.dll"...then scan registry for "OpenCandy", "OCN" and "VOCV".
Removal of all or any of these may cause an error if you later decide to uninstall the application that put them there.
Additionally, if you know there is OpenCandy in an installer before you run it, you can use the /nocandy flag when running it to avoid seeing the ads. I do not know for sure if this also prevents the tracking and crap on the hard drive & registry, though.