If you're anything like me, at some point you've noticed that your hard drive has gotten
uncomfortably full and you've decided to remedy the issue by uninstalling some unwanted programs.
I mean, when's the last time you played Yardwork Simulator 2004 anyway?
But after you run the uninstall utility, you notice that the program you removed has left
behind tons of residual files and registry entries. What's up with that? I mean, how hard is it for a
program to just restore your computer to exactly the state it was in before? We're going to answer
that question today on TechWiki, and we'd like to give a big thank you to our friends at Microsoft
for providing us with some of the insight we're about to share. Now the programs that uninstall,
whatever it is you want to remove, are usually written by the same developer that wrote the
actual program. And this means that there can be a lot of variance in how good of a job these
uninstallers do, and what the developer thinks will be most beneficial to the user experience.
For example, a developer might intentionally decide to leave behind files that store custom
user data and settings, since it's quite common for a user to uninstall a program
only to reinstall it again later. This method makes it so they don't need to set up the software
again. Okay, fair enough, I guess. But this is far from the only reason. Other times, a program
will need certain files called redistributables to run properly. So if you've ever seen an installer
asking to put an additional piece of software such as visual C++ runtime on your computer,
well, that's what that is. Now these can often get used by subsequent programs that you install.
So if the uninstaller were to remove those files, it could potentially break another program at the
same time. If you're a little bit older, you might remember that this was quite common back in the
day when games also installed DirectX at the same time. There's also the matter of how Windows
handles software installations on multi-user systems. Windows often keeps track of settings
and data on a per user basis. So if just one user wants to uninstall the program, it wouldn't be a
great idea to remove all traces of it because the other users would lose their settings and
possibly saved information. This might not be a big deal if nobody else uses your PC or if anyone
else who uses it doesn't need the same programs, but it can be a giant pain if a local network at
a larger organization uses what are called roaming profiles, where one user can access the same files
and settings from any computer on the network. In this case, uninstalling a program on one local
machine could completely mess up that user's experience network-wide if they want to keep
using that same program. Then, of course, there's the ever-enigmatic Windows registry, which programs
are eager to write to when you're installing them, but always seem to leave traces behind
after you've removed them. Well, as it turns out, some uninstallers leave this alone because they
just don't want to go poking around in the registry any more than they absolutely have to,
because screwing up a setting in there can really mess up the rest of your computer. This approach
is somewhat justified by the fact that leaving unneeded registry entries generally won't actually
screw anything up. Finally, to put it bluntly, part of the problem stems from sheer laziness
on the part of some developers. The good news, though, is that having a few stray files or
registry entries typically won't hurt anything or slow down your system, and most leftover files
only take up a minuscule amount of disk base, at least by modern standards. Of course, some programs
can leave remnants that take up an inordinate amount of room on your drive, but you should also
be wary of scare tactics from registry cleaning utilities that claim that this clutter can somehow
slow down or even damage your PC. So if I were you, I'd only worry about remnants left over from an
uninstall if they're taking up tons of space for some reason, or if you have something to hide.
I mean, come on, we've all been there, right? So thanks for watching, guys! Like, dislike,
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