Cannot Uninstall an Application?

If you cannot uninstall applications this can be a real nightmare, but luckily there are a number of straight forward ways that will remove just about any application cleanly.

When I say cleanly I mean without having to manually remove it, which can and usually is very messy as you need to delete the application directory.

Then you need to remove all shortcuts and now you need to remove all invalid registry entries which can take hours or even longer. (this should really be a last resort)

1. Repairing, many applications offer repair options via the add/remove option, select to uninstall the application and you may see this option to repair, try this and then attempt to remove it again.

2. An easy way to remove any application is to simply reinstall it, and then remove it via add/remove afterwards. Reinstalling the application repairs any installation problems making uninstalling a breeze in most cases.

3. A Windows system restore offers another easy way to remove any problem applications that you cannot uninstall. The only downside of the Windows system restore is, you need to make sure you have a restore point back to a date before the application was installed, and you will also lose any other applications that were installed after this period. (you will not lose any files you have created in this period.

4. Check the manufacturers website, you never know there may be an uninstall application or procedure which will cleanly remove the application. The chances are if you have had problems then someone else has probably encountered this issue as well. Many manufacturers’ websites have forums where you can find out.

5. The dreaded manual removal – if you’re really left with no option then a manual removal may be the only way to go. There are various areas that need to be cleaned and deleted, this involves deleting.

The main application directory and any sub directories,
Any application shortcuts,

Application fragments from the registry need to be removed, there will probably be far too many to check manually, applications such as Regclean or Registry Mechanic are very good at this.

Now reboot your computer and see if you get any errors. If you don’t then great, but if you do then it means a shortcut to the deleted application is trying to run.

From the start/run menu select MSCONFIG and then look under the Startup tab to see what is loading when the computer starts up and disable anything that is trying to access the application.

Make sure your computer does not have disk issues - this could be another cause if your having uninstall problems.

A system restore is a good way to uninstall an application

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