Sunday, February 15, 2015

How to completely uninstall applications on Windows

Uninstalling an unwanted program or software completely from windows will definitely help to speed up the windows. To remove the program, we generally uninstall it from the control panel. But that doesn't mean that the software is uninstalled completely. After deleting the software from the control panel, still the traces or files of program left. Some people use software to remove these traces but sometimes this software also fails to uninstall the program completely. So, let us uninstall the program completely by doing it manually:

1) Uninstall the software from control panel

At first, open the control panel and click on ‘Program and Features’ button. Now choose the program that you want to uninstall and press OK.  After doing so, still there are some files which didn't get delete with uninstalling the program.

2) Delete the remaining files of the software

Now, there are some folders and files which still remain. So, to eradicate those files and folders, type:

%programfiles%
%appdata%

And if after executing the commands, if you find any program related to the one that you have deleted in above step, remove it. To do so, just click on start button and type run. Now press enter and you will see the different folders containing files.  Just remove them one by one.

3) Delete the files from the registry as well

While uninstalling a program, many files and folders are not get deleted from the registry. If you want to uninstall the program completely, then you need to remove those files from the windows registry as well also. Follow the below steps to delete the keys from the registry:
a) At first click on start button and type regedit in the box that appears.
b) Now, you will see the “Registry Editor”.
c) Then you have to move to the following keys:

         HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
         HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
         HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software

d) Now, you have to look for a key of the uninstalled program in the above mentioned keys. And if you able to find the key successfully, just delete it from there.
e) And if you get the error message such as “cannot delete key: Error ” while deleting the registry keys, then:
Actually sometimes the key name is identical to the company name or the other name. What you need to do is to expand the keys and check it properly. If you search it properly, you will definitely find it. And remove it.

Note: But remember to take the back up of all the data before deleting any key. 

4) Delete the files from Temp folder

Lastly, we have to remove the files from the Temp folder. First you need to type the below command in ‘Run’ and then press the ‘enter’ button:

%temp%
temp

Now find and delete the files. While deleting the files, if you find that the window is showing error, then that software may be running or the window services is using that file.

Therefore, this is the way to uninstall the software completely from the system. And doing this will definitely improve the performance and speed of the computer or laptop. There are other tips also to increase the SPEED of the computer as well.