Removing Unwanted Programs
When programs are installed on your computer, the process of installing does more than just copying files onto your hard disk drive. As well as copying the relevant files, the operating system (e.g. Windows XP) is updated to incorporate the new software (the main changes are to a database called the system registry, which is the core of the Windows operating system and holds all the information that Windows needs to operate).
Understanding that installing a program is more than just copying files is very important in understanding that removing a program needs to be more than just deleting files.
If you try to remove a Windows program by deleting the folder that contains it's files, you are likely to cause problems that could result in annoying error messages when using your computer. In the worst case it could result in problems such as your computer being unable to boot or other programs not running properly. This is all because Windows will still think the program is installed on your computer.
There are two ways to correctly remove a program from a Windows PC:
The program's uninstall utility
Many applications come with a utility to remove themselves - usually you will find this in the program folder in the Start menu.
To find, and/or run this utility, click Start and then All Programs. This will display a list of programs, and program folders for the programs, installed on your computer.
Look for the folder corresponding to the program you want to remove (in some cases there will be no folder here in which case you should use the second option for removing programs). If there is an option within this folder to remove or uninstall the program, you can do so by clicking it.
TopWindows' add/remove programs utility
If there is no folder under the start menu for the program you want to remove (or if there is no removal tool within the appropriate folder), Windows provides a utility to remove any installed programs.
To run this utility click on start, and then click on Control Panel. This will open the Windows control panel which contains many useful tools for managing your computer. One of these tools is Add or Remove Programs. Double left-click this icon to run the utility.
When you run this utility you will be presented with a window informing you that the list is being populated. This is searching the Windows registry for a list of all installed programs - the time it takes to fill this list will depend on how many programs are installed on your computer.
Once the list is compiled, the window will change to look similar to the following picture (the actual list contents on your computer will differ from this since you will have different programs installed):
To remove a program, first left-click on it once to select it, and then click the Change/Remove button that appears.
Some programs have separate parts that you can add or remove, and in this case when you click on the Change/Remove button you will be presented with further options - one of these should be to remove the application.
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