Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. How to Remove applications
This computing guide sees Kai Chandler getting down to some simple housekeeping
It's so easy to load programs these days. With Windows Autoplay, it's generally just a case of closing the CD-ROM drawer. Of course it can be slightly more complicated if you ever want to remove the program.
Why would you want to remove a program? Well there are several reasons. First, it takes up room on your hard disk and the system will slow down as the hard disk becomes more fragmented. Eventually you'll get a 'disk full' error message. Some programs load each time the computer starts and will take up system resources even though you may not need them.
So the answer is a spot of housekeeping. If you don't need a program why not remove it and free up some space?
A well-behaved program comes with its own uninstall routine. There are two ways of uninstalling these programs:
Method One
Select Settings | Control Panel from the Start menu. Select the icon for Add/Remove Programs. Most programs you've loaded will appear here. Select the program to be uninstalled and then select Add/Remove. This will run the uninstall routine to remove the program.
There are some other useful features here - you can select the Install button to install programs if they don't load automatically when you insert the CD-ROM. Tabs at the top of the window allow you to setup Windows and prepare a Startup disk which is essential if you ever have a problem loading Windows.
If you don't have a Startup disk, stop reading this and make one now!
Method Two
Select Programs from the Start menu. Find the program you wish to uninstall. Is there an uninstall option? If so, it works the same as Method One. The screen shot shows the uninstall option for Quicken Deluxe 2000.
So much for well behaved applications. What about the rest? It's important to realise that when a program installs, it puts files and information into at least two places:
Folder
Almost every installation creates a folder for the program and data files. Typically they'll be placed in a folder under Program Files. If you start Windows Explorer you can find the folder. To do this, right-click the Start button and select Explore to see the folder structure. Can you see a folder called Program Files? Click on the plus (+) sign to its left to open it out. If you load a program called Dork from Dorksoft Software, there's a good chance that there will be a folder called Dork or Dorksoft Software. To remove it just right-click on the folder and select Delete. The contents of the folder will be moved away to the recycle bin and will be completely deleted next time you right click the recycle bin and select empty.
Program listing
To remove the entry in the Program listing, select Settings | Advanced| Task bar and Start Menu from the Start menu. The name of this menu may differ according to which version of Windows you have. The screen shot here is from Windows Me.
Select the Remove option. Locate the entry you wish to remove and then select Remove. This will remove the option from the Program listing.
While you are here, select the Startup folder, click on the Plus (+) sign on its left and you can see the programs that start when Windows starts. If the program you wish to remove is listed here then you should remove this entry in the same manner.
The steps above should remove almost all traces of a program. To be pedantic, there may be some entries in the initialisation files and in the registry but removing them is probably more effort than it's worth.
If you are interested in looking further, the initialisation files are all suffixed .ini and sit in your Windows directory. You can use any editor such as Notepad to examine them but be careful to keep backups in case anything goes amiss.
The registry is the core of Windows. To look at it, select Run from the Start menu, then enter Regedit. By all means have a look around but don't save any changes unless you know what you are doing.
If all this sounds like too much effort then you can invest in an uninstaller such as the excellent Norton Cleansweep but as more and more programs come with their own uninstaller, there's not so much need for these utilities.
