Monday, January 4, 2010

Uninstalling/Removing Groove Monitor (Folder Sync)

What is groove monitor ? First of all, dont worry. Its not a malware or spyware. It comes with microsoft office 2007. You will start noticing a "Folder Sync" button in the explorer. It is a collaboration tool that helps people working in teams. One can create groove workspace which is used to share files between people working together. Once you update files on your machine, the latest version of it can be seen by your teammates. See this link from Microsoft for more info.

Not everyone who works with office 2007 will want to share documents. I do not understand why this feature is being forced on people. This gets installed by default when upgrading to office 2007. Nothing comes for free. The corresponding process (groovemonitor.exe) occupies 30K of memory. Moreover it creates panic in the users. First time I started seeing the "Folder Sync" on the explorer, I was suspecting that its a malware/spyware.

I searched on how to remove this from running. There are many sites which suggested to disable it in the startup programs by running 'msconfig'. But that solution did not work for me. The process kept on coming back and the "Folder Sych" button did not go away. Some sites even suggested to remove the exe file which I think is not a good solution. Finally, I found a neat way to remove it.

1. In control panel, go to "add or remove programs"
2. Choose "Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007" in the list
3. Click "Change". (Do not click "Remove")
4. Three options will be presented.
5. Choose "Add or remove features" and click "Continue"
6. A list of features will be presented
7. Click on box beside "Microsoft office groove" and select "Not available"
8. A small red cross will appear on this feature.
9. Click "Continue" and let the office 2007 uninstall the feature for you.

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