Uninstalling Stuff (Question from my niece)

Q. Tom:

Blockland is on my computer. Can I delete the whole folder, with the .exe and everything?

A.
I don't know what Blockland is. But I'll tell you what I know about uninstalling.

In the "good old days", installing and uninstalling were simple - to install something, you would just copy a file (or a bunch of files) to your machine; to uninstall, you would just delete them.

Many people still subscribe to this "K.I.S.S." philsophy. The "Process Explorer" program works this way - you download a .ZIP file, then extract the files and put them somewhere, then run procexp.exe from wherever you left it.

But then along came Windows. Nowadays most programs come with an installer package. It just so happens that I'm working on one of these evil beasts right now for the newspaper software company that is my main client, which is why you're getting the big long answer instead of a yes/no. An installer does a whole lot of other stuff:

1. Puts information about the program in the Registry
2. Saves a copy of itself that you can't delete in a hidden directory that you can't see
3. Adds to the Start Menu (sometimes this is optional)
4. Adds to the Desktop (sometimes this is optional)
5. Adds itself to the list that you see in "Add/Remove Programs"
6. Adds an "Uninstaller" for itself, that is supposed to completely remove the program, but only if you run it the right way
7. Might also connect to the internet and register you there and/or download updates

If you try to just delete files for a program that used an installer, things can get pretty messed up. I've done this several times, to the point where the program is both installed and not installed - you can't uninstall it because the uninstaller fails; but you can't re-install it either because it is already installed. BPITA.

Often the uninstaller programs have bugs and fail in the middle - even more often, they remove most of a program's residue but still leave stuff for you to clean up manually (this is why you can end up with empty folders in your Start Menu).

So the short answer is, if you find the program in Add/Remove Programs, uninstall it that way. If you see that there is an "Uninstall" entry for the program in the Start Menu, use that. Otherwise, delete everything and hope for the best.

-T