I have the same problem with uninstalling stuff, it drives me nuts.
I went to get Unclean 2.0, but it's not free. You have to pay to join PC MAG. No thanks!
Any other suggestions for a decent program remover would be greatly appreciated. I know there must be some out there.
Besides Unclean 2.0 I have found Total Uninstall 2.34. Any others?
I recommend you purchase Ashampoo's Uninstaller Plus. The beauty of this little app is that it will provide you with the choice of running it everytime you do an install. It does a thorough pre and post install check and record process.
Mr. Pogue hit the proverbial nail on the head!
I also share his frustration. Is anyone aware of any third party uninstallers that are both reliable and reasonably idiot-proof?
I decided to try out "Registry Mechanic." It's a shareware thingy which checks out orphaned stuff in the registry and gets rid of it if you want to. It found 357 supposedly unneeded *things* in my registry and I had the option of removing them. I took a leap of faith and removed them. It's been about a week and so far, so good but like everything else with computers, I have no idea if anything was accomplished or not.
Instaclean Uninstaller costs ten dollars and also gets rid of broken registry keys. There are other "cleaning" utilities that promise you they will do the same; I assume they're better because they're more expensive, but this one seems to do what the Windows uninstaller can't.
One visitor offered an astute observation:
When you have thriving industries surrounding virus protection and software installation, something is very wrong with your system architecture.
Others offered practical advice:
Don't fight--switch.I suffered 20 years of the kind of Microsoft clunkiness that Mr. Pogue is describing. Then I switched to Mac. In three years of upgrading and downloading/trying/removing Mac software, I've never experienced the kind of geeky abuse David describes. In most cases, uninstalling on Mac is as simple as deleting the program's folder. My advice: dump Windows and move to Mac.
Another visitor was more succinct:
May I recommend the following website to help delete all your Windows applications: http://store.apple.com.
One visitor posited that there were worse transgressions than Microsoft's:
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Pretty funny stuff. A nice shortening of the discussions highpoints.
There are still some odd things left if you uninstall a program in Macs. But normally these are in only two folders and are fairly easy to determine where they go.
Pogue is a guy who used to write for MacWorld but has affection for both PC-Mac. Not me. I've never sent my Mac in for repair; never wondered what the hell happened there. I did have to erase everything on my work disk once, but that wasn't my fault (I was assured)
And OSX has elimnated program crashes completelty. One program dies, you force quit it and the computer runs as before.
Of course, it's all down to what you started with and I started with Macs in 1995.
2 - Mark Saleski
the .net comment was particularly funny.
great solultion to bad software...wrap it in an even heavier layer of more software.
3 - DrPat
As someone who has worked with both Mac and PC, I would have to agree that Macs side-step a lot of the problems seen in Windows.
On the other hand, they also have problems with some common stuff. (If I had a nickel for every attached eMail file my Mac-dedicated friend Dave told me he couldn't see, I'd have a szit-load of nickels!)
Same thing holds true with Linux and Unix and other operating systems. You pays yer money, and you takes yer choice...
4 - gonzo marx
being a Fan of David Pogue's stuff for quite the number of years..it was good to see him tee off this way..
i also am in a dual boot household..i went from an Amiga 500 to a 386 PC, next computer was a Mac and kept with them for years ...my better half being into graphic design for 10 years...
i went with 2 computers when i needed to learn XP for work, since the game center LANs were going to be using it, while our servers were Linux builds...
while XP is by far my favorite flavor of n Windows...there are sO many problems inherent in the OS that the strange "unistall" difficulties are merely the surface...
Apple tends ot avoid a lot fo this by requiring their software makers to adhere to a very strict code fo standers...from the way a program installs, to the look and feel as well as function of the Interface and beyond
each has it's strength's and weaknesses
but for Bloat and obscurity..nothing tops Windows...
nuff said?
Excelsior!