How to completely remove a program from my PC?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How best to manually uninstall a program in windows 7/vista

I have a problem uninstalling applications using Windows 7,

Whenever I install a trial or limited program, it doesn't matter how good the uninstaller is, or how good the registry cleaner is: It'll never able to get rid of it completely.

How do I completely remove a program from my laptop with all registry entries? And how do I whether the application has totally disappeared from my laptop?

Solution 1

From: Force Uninstall - How to Fully Uninstall the Unnecessary Software from Your PC in Minutes

Click Start and choose Run in the menu (If you're using Windows Vista then press Win+R on your keyboard).

Type regedit and hit Enter.

On the left side is the registry settings tree, use it to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

Inside that key you'll find a lot of keys that belong to different programs. Some are named after the program's name, others as a mix of numbers and letters that makes no sense. Look through each of them until you find one that has the key DisplayName (on the right) with your program's name in it.

Notice the key UninstallString - this key points to the uninstall program, and the log file usually resides in the same folder as that program.

If you delete the key in which you've found the DisplayName key with the value equal to your program's name, then your program won't appear on the Add/Remove programs list.

Solution 2

Personally I use Sandboxie for checking out programs (trials etc), I install Applications I want to try in to the Default Sandbox, play with them for a while and then if I want to keep them and are happy with the programs behaviour I re-install on the "live" system.

If I don't like them I simply delete the contents of the Sandbox.

http://www.sandboxie.com/

Solution 3

Short answer: You probably can't.

Long answer: Most installers will have a list of requirements that the program want when it's installed. This is however not the whole truth. A program can make changes on the computer after the fact, for example when it's being run and you change a setting it can write this to the registry. You could add your own file association after the fact and this will be written to the registry.

So when an uninstaller is run, it will probably only look at the list that the installer used and remove those changes. Any other changes that the program has made after it was installed will not be removed by the uninsnstaller.

You could perhaps rectify this by running Process Monitor for example and track every change the program does to your computer when it's being run. It will however probably make the program quite impossible to use since you will have to watch Process Monitor at the same time.

Comments

[default locale]

I think there's no generic answer for this question. Steps strictly depend on application.

[Indrek]

How did you determine that the uninstaller isn't removing all traces of the program? Also, are you experiencing any performance or stability issues that you suspect are the result of this?

[slhck]

I'm pretty sure your question suffers from the XY Problem. You're asking for your attempted solution rather than your real problem. Why would you care if everything's removed completely? What are you really trying to do? Are there any problems with your current installation? Which task are you trying to achieve?

[Perdana Putra]

so there is no way to completely remove the application from a PC? thanks a lot for the explanation

[chawkinsuf]

It's possible. It will just require a lot of effort on your part. And you will have to determine if the effort is worth it.

[slhck]

Ah, I thought so. Do not copy and paste content without attributing the proper source. Otherwise, your posts will be deleted, and if you continue to do so, your account can be suspended for violating the terms you agreed to when signing up for the site.