For the past year, one of our users had a problem with a pop-up that kept showing on their Dell machine. The pop-up box in question was a nuisance, as it appeared several times throughout the day.
This alert came from a program called Trusted Drive Manager, which was looking for a specific file in the Dell Data Protection folder. In our case, it was telling us that the resource could not be located.
Despite searching through the “Program and Features” list, we failed to find any trace of the Trusted Drive Manager application. In many cases, this kind of thing happens because of a botched uninstall, in which the uninstaller fails to remove all components of the software from your computer.
The first course of action was to use a Microsoft tool called “Fix problems that programs cannot be installed or uninstalled” (such a nice and snappy name). The link for this particular tool can be found here. After starting the application, we chose the “problems with uninstall” option, which gave us a list of all of the programs that were currently on the computer. Sure enough, “Trusted Drive Manager” was listed, despite the fact that it was not showing up in the “Programs and Features” list.
After selecting the application and uninstalling it, I decided to root around in the scheduled tasks. There, we disabled anything that looked out of place or was unnecessary (PS: Do not do this unless you know what you are doing).
Lastly, we downloaded CCleaner, which allowed me to clean out all of the temporary files / junk that were on the computer. This tool also gives you the ability to run a registry check, which will scan and remove any junk / orphan entries that are in the registry.
Thankfully, this seems to have fixed the issue.