i downloaded a trial of some waves plugins and uninstalled them from my machine when the trial period was over.  problem is, they're still showing up in my plugin manager.  tried the waves forums but no luck.  anyone here know the answer???

Not a solution, and I'd never paid much attention to that but, confirming that  every Waves plug-in I've ever demoed still shows up in my plug-in manager (on Mac). 

No such issue w/ any other plug-in.

My only guess so far is that they stay registered in Waves' own shell (probably WaveShell VST or something similar in your case) even after the plugs themselves are removed.

yeah i need clutter on my system. no wonder they're knocking the price down on them.  pft.

Have you tried a search to see what was left after the uninstall - also i expect you will need to look at the registry - I had a similar problem and if I remember correctly it was as Rain said something to do with waveshells being left behind (not correctly uninstalled) 
Hope this helps
Nigel

It's probably that the "Waveshell" is still there. Try going into your programs and features area of your control panel and see it its still listed. If so, uninstall it. Or see if you can simply delete it from whatever folder it's in.

well, waveshell was uninstalled...
didn't remove all the programs from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\Cakewalk VST X64\Inventory

i hate hate hate doing registry edits.  *sigh*


I guess you could say cakewalk and waves are "tightly integrated" from a marketing perspective. :D