What To Do When You Can’t Uninstall a Program

The Add or Remove Programs utility that comes with the Windows operating system often fails to ensure complete removal of programs. Therefore, quite often, loads of orphan files, folders and registry entries are left behind. Over time, your system gets clogged with this unwanted data that eventually causes it to slow down and even generate many different types of errors.

This is the reason why to prevent all these problems, it is essential that we take measures to ensure complete removal of programs from the system. There are many different tools available today that can help you achieve this goal. Some of the commonly used tools and methods are discussed in this article.

Program-related Uninstallers

These program uninstallers are usually developed by specific software manufacturers to ensure complete removal of their products from user computer. For instance, if you often wonder how to uninstall Norton or McAfee products completely from your computer, then you may just visit their manufacturers official web site and download Norton or McAfee uninstallers from there. These uninstallers are useful because these software programs are quite large in size and they copy several files, folders and registry entries to your computer. This makes them practically impossible to remove them completely using Add or Remove Programs. When you use an uninstaller tool specifically designed to remove a particular product, it scans your entire system and ensure complete program removal from the system. These uninstaller tools are particularly useful when a program installed on your system goes faulty and you want to completely uninstall it from the system before performing a new installation.

Third-party Program Uninstallers

Not all programs come with specific uninstallers. The only way to uninstall these programs is to use Add or Remove Programs or the uninstall utility that comes packaged with the program. Now, if you have a failed installation or uninstallation, or if the files of the program on the PC go corrupt, you may not be able to use the available utilities to uninstall this program. For instance, if the required program files go corrupt, you may not be able to uninstall Yahoo Messenger from your computer using Add or Remove Programs. In this case, you may seek help of a reliable third-party program uninstaller tool. There are several program uninstaller tools available on the Internet. As a vigilant user, you must opt for a tool that is compatible with your Windows operating system, is easy to use, comprises the features you require, and of course, carries good user reviews.

Now, as all programs when installed on a Windows computer add their configuration information within the Windows registry, it is essential that you scan and clean your registry to ensure that all files related to the uninstalled program are removed from it. You can do this by using the Find and Delete options available in the Windows Registry Editor (regedit). However, if you are not comfortable working with the Registry Editor tool, you may opt to use a reliable and simple-to-use third party registry cleaner tool. Because registry is critical for functioning of your Windows computer, remember to make a registry backup before proceeding with any changes.