Cannot upgrade because uninstall fails

Somehow I got into a borked state where I cannot uninstall the current version I have. The crux of the issue is that I lost "unins000.exe", it just doesn't exist on my computer any more :-(

Two key things I've tried:

1. Going to programs and features out of control panel, and then uninstalling from there fails because the above EXE is missing.

2. The attached picture is what happens when I run the new installer I just downloaded. It fails with a misleading error of "access denied".

Any ideas on how to uninstall? I much prefer doing things more cleanly than simply remove the "program files/Heidisql" directory and mucking with the registry by hand. I prefer to keep my settings intact, in particular connection information and passwords, as I have quite a few.

If the normal uninstall fails, I highly recommend removing the directory C:\Program Files\HeidiSQL\ that should be absolutely fine.

Reinstalling afterwards should give you no "access denied" error, unless you run the installer with lower privileges.

Your settings for sessions and all other stuff is localted in the registry. The uninstaller also does not delete them. And the newly installed version uses your old settings when they're still at the same key.

That worked perfectly, THANK YOU!