Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Time to Uninstall Your Uninstaller
One of your New Year’s resolutions should be to clean up not just your act, but also your computer. In prior Tech Tips I’ve talked about physical maintenance, file maintenance and hard drive maintenance, so this blog is about removing those programs you no longer use. Every flavor of Windows® comes with an uninstall program. It’s located in the Control Panel with the name Add or Remove Programs. Just about every peripheral device (printers, wireless cards, etc.) comes with associated software and, like most other programs, often has its own uninstall routine that usually works pretty well. My problem with the Windows uninstaller is that it runs slowly and Add or Remove doesn’t reflect everything installed on your computer. Plus, just about every uninstaller tends to leave odd bits, files and folders on your computer and in your Windows Registry, which over time can affect performance.
