However, when I open the control panel, add/remove programs the repair and delete buttons are gone???

any ideas?

That is a head scratcher, not sure what may be wrong there sorry

restart

Reboot your system, and if that doesn't help, do a system restore to a time when you are sure they have been there.

did reboot before I posted here

will try a system restore thanks

was curious if it ever happened to anyone else, I have run AVG and Spybot just in case and nothing.

The add and remove panel gets it's data from
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

What has happened is either you have already uninstalled that program and registry didn't get fully updated,

or

Few keys are missing from a subkey of the one I list, corresponding to the program in question.

You can add them back. Just find the subkey and add binary values "NoModify" and "NoRepair", and set them to 1.

These will not work if there wasn't corresponding mechanism provided for repair and modification.

In this case, Uninstall, reboot, reinstall.

There's a pretty cool uninstall utility called "Revo Uninstaller", that will not only uninstall the program you want nuked, but it'll also search for instances of said program in your registry to make sure it's gone. It totally rocks, too- it goes into every nook and cranny to get rid of the proggies you don't want any more.

The best part is that it's free, too.

googled this mystery and found that if the values are set to '1' that the buttons would not appear. Went to run/regedit/hklm/soft/micro/wind/currver/uninstall and only found few of the programs I have on computer there. did find the yahoo files but none of the other programs - kinda weird I dont know. The 'NoMod/NoRep' values were oset on 1 I changed it to '0' still nothing.

Yup, what he said

uninstall, reboot and reinstall what??
how??

I am unable to remove programs thru the control panel and the program does not have the uninstall feature.

Oops, I've said "set them to 1, I really meant to 0. That's obvious though.

Anyway, you didn't say you do not have "remove" button.

Delete corresponding folder from Program Files.
Delete Corresponding key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\
Reboot, reinstall, then either uninstall properly using add/remove or keep it. (Actually, you can skip the registry part as well, in this scenario).

It sounds like a Windows Service Pack 3 issue I had. You might have to try to uninstall the SP3, and change your automatic update settings, so your machine doesnt install it again.

As of yet, I have no problems with SP3. Of course I always do a full backup before installing service packs...you never know with those.