Why do Programs Leave JUNK Behind??
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
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Why do programs never seem to uninstall completely?
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My OCD won't rest until I have hunted down and deleted every single file or registry key from an unistalled program.
Same
This is literally me searching in "This PC" OVER 10 TIMES just so that all the files are GONE
use Revo Uninstaller, and when uninstalling a program use advanced search, it's incredible how much jerk it detects
NOTICE: dont uninstalling steam games from there or it will detect other steam games as junk and will delete them too I learnt it the hard way haha
David's Blaine new stunt is happening this month on the 31st of August!
Me, a linux user:we don't have such weakness
Someone: Deletes shortcut and thinks they uninstalled the *whole* program
I'm guessing it was you
@@jimitSoni lol True
Happens all the time!
Me when I was 10😅
Deltarune: ah yes delete the *whole* shortcut
I can't remember what game it was, but I had one on Steam that left basically everything when it uninstalled.
Gamefiles too? Like it only deleted the exe?
I’ve had this happen with an indie game from steam, it’s been fixed since then though
Lol same, it literally deleted the main file location and the desktop icon. It left all the games files behind. It's very annoying.
Edit: forgot to mention, it wasn't the game you were talking about, probably.
Same
World of tanks in 2014 'uninstall' just .exe
Linus: "When was the last time you played yard work simulator 2004 anyway"
Last night since they added ray tracing....I'm on level 43
Pssst noob, am on level 886 with the ultimate grass cutter that does 999 damage
@@thealien_ali3382noooob mate ive already moved on onto the laser beam grass and shrub trimmer
@@lamoona4269 nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooob i even have the destroyer of all grass types ahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhah
AAAAAAAAAA
Hahaha
You all noobs... I have unlocked Mars and colonized it, now cutting grass over there
"Because if it removes them, it might break other softwares"
Oh god, only if we had somekind of solution to dependency management.. Like imagine if there would be a solution, which would track those dependencies, and install and remove them as needed..
But even then, this commands are disabled in distros tailored for servers. If you are just a tinkerer at home, it is not that big of a deal if something goes wrong.
Many programs on Linux create special users and ppas just for them and they are not deleted if you uninstall the program which created it.
yep Linux is better at this but still not perfect. Best at cleanup is actually iOS because everything is sandboxed, but managing files on it can suck as a result.
this post was made by linux gang
@Sarthak Sharma uwu
30-day trial was over. Uninstalled and reinstalled the program.
"Your trial has expired. Please register the product."
"I knew you sneakily left something in my PC without my permission!!!"
Get the Program "runasdate.exe" and launch those free trials with that. It will never reach the 30 days. :)
One trick that sometimes works (although it has the potential to backfire if the program is too clever) is to set the date far in the future, install the program and then set the date back. If it's waiting for your 30 day trial to expire on Jan. 30, 2090, it'll have a long wait. However some programs are smart enough to check if the current date is older than the install date.
Another option is to use a program like Total Uninstall, which will compare the registry and whatever directories you tell it, before and after, so that it can delete everything the program adds.
@@DarkNexarius that works with simple software, not stuff that dials home, which is most nowadays
@@lurkerrekrul Encrypted registry keys are usually not taken into account even with Total Uninstall.
use trial reset-er
"friends at Microsoft..." "uninstall Mozilla...." 🤣🤣🤣
I seen't that LOL
Nicely played.
🤣
sudo apt autoremove --purge firefox
*purge the fox*
1:50 oh god,i remember going through the process of reinstalling directX EVERY SINGLE TIME
now its the process of un-checking the box every single time
Basically keeping registerey intry prevents from using the free trial more than once :)
This is a good reason to spin up a copy of VirtualBox with the OS and the program in it.
You can snap-shot the "hard drive" just before the install of the free trial and make copies later.
yeah i was waiting for him to say that when he reached the registry part but he never said it.
Even free programs leave tons of crap in the registry.
old method but checks out
@@kensmith5694 wish that still worked. programs now recognize they're being ran in a virtual environment and will refuse to work
Back in the old days of Windows 95, there was a program called Cleansweep 95. It detected that you want to install a game or program and everything was stored in Cleansweep 95. Every file, exe and even the registry was stored. Whenever you wanted to uninstall a program or game, you did it through Cleansweep 95, which opened the stored information to safely remove everything the program or game installed on your machine. When the icon next to the file was green, it was safe, if it was red, it was a dangerous file that could potentially harm your pc and when the icon was blue, that specific file was also used my another program.
Since than, numerous companies has made their own so called "safe uninstaller", that logged everything, to "restore" your machine back before you installed the program or game.
I still remember this because my first computer had Windows 95 installed when I became 18 years old. I do love the days that I played games on my dad's TRS-80 pc made by Tandy Corporation...
Program: “Gonna delete me?
“Good Luck”
Man,so freaking true
2014 baidu antivirus.
sudo apt purge Program
for everyone having issues use iobit uninstaller, legit uninstaller that can remove stubborn programs.
David's Blaine new stunt is happening this month on the 31st of August!
Remnants of McAfee can still keep other antiviruses from installing. So always use the optional removal tool if it's forced onto your pc
Program: you can't uninstall me.
Me: hold my 'open file location' button
Me: hold my registry shortcut
@@insanitylol HaHa, that one was amazing too!
hold my command prompt
hold my magnet
@@insanitylol lol that’s also me
I remember growing up and on windows 95 constantly getting "these files don't appear to be in use anymore, would you like to remove them?" when uninstalling shareware games.
Needless to say, i learned real quick not to say yes.
Ah .OCX files... that brings back memories...
I find it more bothering that almost every program these days adds services that start when windows boots up. Do i need the telemetry that half of the times comes with those services ?
... and worse yet perhaps are the ones that start up and generate an error message when you boot for some reason.
I vaguely recall that there's some kind of autoruns utility from...Microsoft (I think?) that allows you to properly disable them, but I don't remember the details. You'll have to do a bit of digging if you're interested, sorry.
@@nickolas474 You can manually disable them through the services interface of Windows.
@@kensmith5694 Let me guess? Afterburner?
@@mateuszzimon8216
Microsoft Teams among others
On 95/98 you could create an entirely new registry by importing a small text file that contained the main branch top level names. It was basically a quick way to reinstall Windows without actually having to reinstall.
That's why us Linux users use package managers. You don't have to rely on the software developer to make a decent uninstall script, rather your package manager manages the install and uninstall process for you. Plus, you can specify if you don't want to keep your configuration files.
That's not true with the configuration files. All the user based configurations or all configuration within /etc you changed manually usually don't get deleted automatically.
@@NicosLeben Why would you change config files in etc when you can copy them to config?
@@mcgullible5212 What do you mean? I am thinking of main.cf or master.cf of postfix. In other places there are config directories where you can overwrite default values without touching the original files which is nice. But it's not everywhere the same.
Not really. The package manager runs the install and uninstall scripts. It deals with dependencies too - and those are declared by whoever created the package. Don't get me wrong: it is years ahead of what Windows uses - but it still depends upon the programmer who created the package.
Developers just write codes in bunches and once they see it's functional, they just leave it there.
This it the main cause for residual files and interface inconsistencies. Why else do you think windows 10 interface is such a mishmash??
I assumed they were drunk. You mean they designed that when sober!
Because it's still using the nt kernel and it's near impossible to maintain consistency along with backward compatibility? It really amazes me how illogical people can be - ignoring all historical contexts and blame everything on developers being lazy? What makes you think you know interface designing better than an entire team of dedicated engineers and designers?
It's because MS never specified how that stuff should be handled until relatively late in the game. Before Win 95 you could install things anywhere you liked, including stupid places like the root directory. I had my computer only loading in monochrome for a while because DOS got confused by a program that had been installed there. Even after Win 95 it remained a suggestion for years and it really wasn't until closer to Vista where they became more forceful about it.
But, the worst offender is the Windows Registry where programs wind up doing a bunch of writing for god only knows what reason. Linux and *BSD use text files for configuration and they're mostly just read by the program that wrote the config file.
@@Rodrigo-me6nq there's a solution for consistency AND backward(s) compatibility, it's called only making 1 OS and keep updating it until the end of time.
@@LazyJesse You mean steadily improving on an existing mature kernel, like ms is doing now, or do you mean never changing the interface and have people complain about ms being lazy?
When I uninstall a program i usually manually search for leftover folders and delete the leftover registry keys
yeah... sure you do ...
nictou Cheer up! Don't be a sour pus!
CCleaner makes it pretty easy
My “Friend” at Microsoft that doesn’t allow me to activate windows multiple times :)
You know someone for real in the Microsoft Deproductivity Department? AWWWWEsome.
By the way, would you give them a sharp kick in the nuts, please?
@@Bill_Woo sudo apt autoremove --purge Microsoft-Windows
@@ggldmrd5583 bruh just sudo apt purge microsoft-windows
Apple fan boys: yes
im going to design a collar that detects "speaking of", and shocks EVERY staff member of LMG.
Ask Michael Reeves for that. But it wouldn't be an LMG channel without the segues.
LMAO
David's Blaine new stunt is happening this month on the 31st of August!
@@lfox02 Yup. I would miss those. And besides, since they're in front of the intro, you can easily skip those without missing anything.
Since they're in front of the intro, you can easily skip those without losing any infos.
Don't forget to mention that when your trying to uninstall software that fails because it can't find the files to uninstall. There is a lot of times you may have to manually go to revo or thunderbolt to get rid of that left over regerestry because if you don't the software won't install the same program..
I was hoping that they would mention the modern AppX packaging format as a way of showing how things could and should be done going forward. AppX packaging means basically everything is stored in a application container, so when uninstalling Windows can just remove the container and everything is gone. By nature of this approach it also means apps tend to be more sandboxed and so keeping the system more secure.
A lot of that has to do with MS not properly designing their installs, or really designing it at all. Really, programs should have the main installation in one place, and then preferences being stored in a clearly labeled folder under the user's home directory. I do think that leaving the preferences in place when you uninstall is a reasonable option, but there shouldn't be any program related files anywhere else, with the exception of things like images, documents and other files that the user may have used the program to create.
Appx packages are horrible, they are a PAIN for users to manage and in fact microbad tries hard to prevent users from going in there. The thing is there is no real "program" its only files and its customary to put files in places. One great idea would be to NOT HAVE MADE THE CURSED REGISTRY but in reality most "solutions" to this problem are just not going to work for advanced users, developers and complex programs like games. It will also add more overhead for small utilities and system tweaks. COMPUTERS ARE NOT PHONES.
@@rohansampat1995 In theory the registry is a good idea: provide a standard approach for storing key-value pairs, but the implementation, while fine for its time, leaves a lot to be desired these days. But, I'm not sure I follow your thinking around why they are a pain for users to manage? Thinking about the average user, I've seen people literally go and delete things from the Programmes folder thinking that's how to uninstall something. I'd argue the approach is actually better because it guides users to use the proper tools for installing and uninstalling applications.
@@AaronMcHale No thats the wrong thinking. The average users is a literal muppet when it comes to tech. They suck. Think about the users who are trying to use their tech better. Then you see that because of all this "average user" crap, they have a hard time doing things. A knowledgable user can do all these things but if a user is trying to BECOME knowledgable its a hard hard thing which allows companies to start CONTROLLING us. You ever tried to install a third party appx package thats NOT on the msoft store? do you have any idea how difficult that is compared to an installer. for a power user its just a command but your user that is becoming knowledgable has to start understanding powershell. Next its common frameworks. Those are bundled into the appx which means you may need to install multiple appx instead of just one and the WORST POSSIBLE THING, is the naming. They are named like utter garbage. Nonsense names. OH AND YOU CANT MANAGE YOUR OWN APPX without knowledge of how to take ownership. Its a horrible horrible system designed primarily for control. Not designed for users.
@@rohansampat1995 I feel like you're project your own frustrations onto "average users", no average user is going to be running Powershell commands to install AppX packages, they're going to be installing them through the MS Store or equivalent. For example, I've never seen a software company make AppX packages available as download options from their website, usually they provide a MSI or EXE. So when you talk about these users who are trying to become knowledgeable, either they're still just installing apps from the Store or downloading EXE/MSI, but if they're installing an AppX package, they might find copying and pasting a PowerShell command to be not that much effort; But again, in the real world that's a very unlikely scenario. The naming system is using UUID strings, which are actually widely used in software development and in this case prevents name collisions, that's not a bad thing, and again most users will never need to understand that, it's the equivalent of a user tyring to decode a DLL file. Generally, users just search for the app they want and open it, or open it from Start/Taskbar, they don't need to understand things which are essentially internal structures. With the ownership, it's design so that apps are sandboxed from each other, each app essentially runs under its own user, isolated from other apps, which increased security, it makes it harder for an app which might have malware bundled with it to break out and start infecting other things, so there's a reason you shouldn't mess with the file ownership and it's been designed in that way.
A good example of an uninstaller gone wrong is the game :Pool of Radiance: an older top down D&D game. or as its commonly known "Pool of Uninstall Windows" because the uninstall would break windows and the company had to issue a downloadable uninstaller to use to work around the problem.
Autodesk leaves so much behind, it's nearly impossible to rid of everything from them.
I'll tell you, I have a tiny boot drive that is really just for windows and some smaller programs that I want to run fast. It continually fills up with crap that programs I want installed on my program drive just dump in there, and that stuff doesn't get removed when I use uninstallers, because of course it doesn't.
I just love it.
The end of the story; lazy development.
Basically the same reason why a web-browser, or pdf viewer is over 100MB these days :(
Well, the size of those tools is probably the images inside mostly
Web browsers are an OS on themself. They need to manage different programs, rights, have their own rendering engine, their own debugger, need to manage memory and much more.
It is hard to keep them smaller.
For the PDF search a small open source PDF viewer. I use evince, it is not very small but a lot smaller than 100 MB.
@@mskiptr nah electron crap like skype, teams, clickup etc. Just funny how bad it is, 300MB disk and 1.5GB of ram for Microsoft's shitty teams application, lazy fucks.
@@skywalker778 not only on microsoft, for example, spotify, whatsapp app, discord, and probably many other electron based app
they made it that way in case you had to reinstall... plus they made it file everywhere to the point no uninstall can get rip of them all...
Love it when you uninstall a program and it opens a page with a sad puppy or cat saying something like "we are sorry to see you go..."
“Some programs are eager to write to, but leave junk behind”
Like some house guests.
Remember house guests?
2020 is messed.
David's Blaine new stunt is happening this month on the 31st of August!
Dragos Pahontu F off
Dragos Pahontu reported for spam. Gtfo
2020? Trump. He's not that bad...
@Dragos Pahontu f off spammer
What you mean to say is that Windows developers do not bother to provide a safe way to remove registry data.
When I find that some software is leaving some data after uninstall, I use some special softwares clean the left overs. The saddest part is that those special softwares also leaves some data after uninstall.
Lmao
Just use an even more special software to clean the junk of the normal special junkcleaner software until there only one file left that you than manually uninstall, ez peasy
Just use revo uninstaller portable
@@lordeilluminati There is a portable edition of Revo Uninstaller?
@@sk.sourov yes, on the official website www.revouninstaller.com/pt/revo-uninstaller-free-download/ just click on portable. Portable versions of programs dont use or save registry entries and profile data (user folder/appdata)
Programs are like jobs that people perform various tasks to carry out using various tools and devices. Ideally you'd clean and tidy up the place every time after a task is completed, but it's sometimes more efficient to be messy as long as you can memorize where things are because you can start working with the tools immediately without having to take them out like a program initializing a task from scratch every time.
Well: there is a tool called revo uninstaller. It’s free! Scans for leftover junk after the uninstaller did. it’s thing
Works well! I use it all the time now seriously.
I have the pro version and with advanced it literally cleans anything
what if you wanted to remove the revo uninstaller it will still keep trash lol
@@obadanw yep 😂
@@obadanw you don't remove it lol why would you do that.
"Not a big deal if nobody else uses your pc".......and you forget to delete your browsing history
David's Blaine new stunt is happening this month on the 31st of August!
Answer: use "Private Browsing", solves that problem.
Or else, make a habit of regularly using something like "CCleaner".
Supratim Das No, don’t use CCleaner.
Joe Al Bleachbit yes, but please don’t recommend CCleaner. It’s pretty sketchy.
@@bloonyapprentice4340 Well, from what i read, most of the issues with CCleaner is when using with Win 10, but i am still on Win 7 (so most of the substitute features that Win 10 has, aren't in Win 7 as far as i know).
As for privacy and data steal/hack issues, well every pieces of program or app has that issue from any company, be it Google, or Facebook, or Microsoft. Can't really avoid that even if i wanted to.
I mainly use CCleaner to remove all unneeded files which default Windows cleaner usually skip out, and i don't really know a good alternative to it (since have been using CCleaner for nearly 10+ years now).
2 words : Revo Uninstaller. It deletes the leftovers in folders and even cleans your registry for you.
Doesn't run my Windows programs :- (
Sarthak Sharma plenty of Linux programs leave behind stray config files or even executables. Plus some require manual installation and (hence uninstalling) of dependencies
sudo pacman -Rns
Leaving junk?
Nope.
It can. For example some programs nee to create users which are not removed when removing the program. Removing users automatically is bad because it could delete users that are used and what do you do with the files owned by that user?
Well, im more about sudo apt autoremove --purge but still agree
Laughs in “Sudo pacman -Rns”
Laughs in " doas emerge --depclean"
Creeper Wow another linux joke, hilarious. I'm dying man! You are truly a comedian! The cream of the crop!
you may still have un-tracked file (normally conf in your home folder)
You know what's funny, basically every other os out there right now uses some sort of package manager, wether it's android with play store, ios/macos with apple store, linux with it's usually more powerful and better package managers. They all have had this basic thing that resolves problems with redistributables(dependencies) and removing files of apps and installing apps from trusted sources for like the past 2 decades. Except for windows which is still trying to push the microsoft store and still has a central point of failure, the registry which no other os has because normal config files and databases solve the problem better than a registry.
This comment was written by the arch-based gang...
You forgot about install tracking. Some applications will purposely leave files and/or registry entries on the system to prevent people from uninstalling and reinstalling evaluation software in an attempt to create a perpetual evaluation period.
Yeap..those are called either " key loggers" or " data loggers". And it is yet another of the many reasons I stopped using Third party programs like Ccleaner and bs registry cleaners years ago. I've been on linux 100% for about a month now. Nice to not have to worry about such bs :D
use Revo Uninstaller, and when uninstalling a program use advanced search, it's incredible how much jerk it detects, it also allows you to install Microsoft bloatware!
NOTICE: dont uninstall steam games from there or it will detect other steam games as junk and will delete them too I learnt it the hard way haha
@@henryrussell7392 no, he said not to use those who just clean around, this focuses only on the uninstalled program, it's not searching for other junk files, and I do it only for large programs in case they leave stuff behind
I remember uninstalling Norton antivirus which caused allsorts of problems, from stopping Outlook from working to stopping windows from booting, and even when you managed to get rid of it you couldn’t reinstall any anti virus program.
Me: Uninstall!
Visual Studio: LOL, sure...
Ahah
Had a client who did the 7 to 10 free upgrade, and had system restore on, to their C: drive, guess what happened when also windows 7 backup and restore kept backing up more and more restore points to the main drive for some reason, it filled up an entire 2TB of space including her windows install. TreeSize Free ran as administrator is a really good way to find these things because they aren't always apparent at first, a lot of times excess used space can simply be from onedrive or google drive or some kind of cloud storage being set up for "Offline Files" which I learned recently is mostly unnecessary and sometimes a problem if you work in a setting where multiple users collaborate and god forbid anyone has any sync issues.
Me: "dies"
Linus: "See! I told you it would happen!"
David's Blaine new stunt is happening this month on the 31st of August!
Imagine having to use uninstaller and clean stuff up to remove a program
_This post was made by the Linux gang_
Cries in ./configure make make install
"I'm better because I have to learn how to install each of my programs."
@@kaldo_kaldo False, don't even need to hunt down a installer, either. Open a package manager tell it I want this program, hit install, done. Oh I want 150 programs, cool, same process but queued. It is, in fact, Windows that requires you to learn the myriad of different installers and their procedures.
@El Dimos Karam you realize a "package manager" is essentially an app store right? Are you seriously suggesting that using weird software (that sometimes the developer didn't even include or link to window's Programs/Features page) is easier than opening an app store and clicking uninstall?
Apt purge PROGRAM && apt --purge autoremove;
Linus can still try to sell us his cleanup programme LOL
Are you British?
Don't take it seriously tho
@@TheRealDrae His spelling of "programme" is indicative of commonwealth citizenship yes.
@@Pawn2e4 Fun story: Australia spells it as "program". And then a certain conservative prime minister changed it back to "programme" *sigh*
@@davtra which pm did that? We have had so many.
That's why there's Revo. It's been my go to tool for uninstalling programs on Windows for many years now. I don't run Windows on any of my home computers, but at work all the "legit" reasons why programs leave junk behind after uninstalling can usually be mitigated so it's pretty rare that there's a need for leaving all the junk behind on a system. I'd be happy if uninstallers had a "kill everything" option so you didn't have to use a 3rd party tool, but here are...
Why do these video’s always upload at the right time🤣
Ikr. My friend and I were talking about CPUs about 2 weeks ago, and we wandering why CPU are not bigger.
They track us
Media Tech hahaha
Heena Patel 🤣
I know right, I was just cursing about Junk files taking up space but on Android
Another reason registry entries are left behind is to prevent you from abusing the "7-day trial" system on some apps.
"Why Your Programs Leave JUNK Behind"
Just like people when they purposely leave their crap at your house, so they have an excuse to come back!
Omg this. This is so true!
Some potentially unwanted programs like adware or browser hijackers will leave actual malware behind. If you're uninstalling something like that, use Revo Uninstaller to make sure you get everything.
"Back in the day when games installed DirectX..."
Literally every Ubisoft game after first download, press play and again starts to check and install additional programs
I always find uninstallers that keep user data horrible, just give the user a option to backup their userdata.
It's horrible because misconfigurations, corrupt files can also occur in the userdata which is loaded when an applications starts and therefor it crashes. So the user tries to uninstall/install the program to fix the issue without any result, and this happens a LOT, and many user don't understand what is exactly happening.
My OCD requires me to scrounge through my Program Files and Appdata for programs that left stuff behind.
I use Revo Uninstaller which let's you delete leftover registry files. Even find additional folders you can delete afterwards. It's crazy how much junk is left behind by some programs.
Summary: "Because they are not designed well enough."
Ikr
Yeah thanks for saving time
Not really... More like Windows are not design well enough.
summary its because the windows OS ecosystem is not designed well enough
Vignesh S as if other system handle it better? Plenty of others have this issue.
One of the other reasons to have an uninstaller that removes all those miscellaneous files is if you are getting any sort of weirdness or errors from a program and need to try a clean install. Removing all previous traces of the software before reinstalling can help fix a lot of issues.
Well, some programs can uninstall even too well.
*early version of minecraft dungeons uninstaller*
Lmao
yes
Was this with the xbox game pass? Because most of the time when i uninstall games in that god forsaken xbox launcher, the files are still on the harddrive. And dont get me started on those fucking folders that get created in the root folder on the hdd/ssd you choose to install games on.
@@user-qr9oj8bt6v It was on microsoft store. When you tried to uninstall game it not only deletes the game folder but also a folder where that game folder was located. So if you installed game on "C:/Games/Minecraft Dungeons", uninstaller deleted folder "Games". If you installed game on C:/ without creating any folder then the game was just formatting your C:/ drive.
From my experience Windows leaves way more "temp" files than programs leave residual files. Windows 7 had a huge problem with not clearing hundreds of GBs of temp files. Idk if it's fully fixed with Windows 10, but I still clean it on occasion, especially a month or so after big updates.
I never knew Obi-Wan was a Tech Tip Giver.
The solutions I use personally: 1. Physically separate out boot drive and allow no data to be written/lose all data when reboot. 2. Use virtual machines. 3. Switch to Linux.
Simply by getting a new SSD and name it disk X and install absolutely nothing into it, I have kept its size under control for over 2 years.
If the Linux you switch to is Puppy Linux, there is a clever thing available. The system you started with is a compressed file. This is read only. The changes go in the "personal settings" file or folder. This means you can always go back to day one and you can save the personal settings in a new place before you install a program you want to try out.
Me: *Install a cleanup registry utility software
Again Me: *Done deleting them
Also Me Again: *Time to delete the utility software
Utility Software: *U S u R e A b O u T T h A t ?*
What I hate is the fact that sometimes you don’t even get an uninstall option with some programs. You have to download a separate uninstall program, and then that program leaves behind 90% of what it put on your computer so instead of getting back 248mb you get maybe 50mb, and a random folder you’re probably not going to open again.
Seriously? Microsoft helps with a video and you choose Firefox as an example for a program you no longer need?
lol just noticed
I remember there rare glitchy programs that would just give an error when trying to uninstall, but would also give an error when trying to delete their folder. Then I'd just run Malwarebytes over the thing and it would often be picked up as harmful and fixed
i remember some cracked software would delete everything i mean EVERYTHING on that drive lol
Oop
Minecraft Dungeons be like
@@codertommy6883 why?
@@null418 there was a bug where uninstalling the game would uninstall everything else in the programs folder
YouTutor really!?
Registry residuals can actually be absolutely terrible for some programs. I had to uninstall and reinstall zune once, years ago, and it refused to reinstall because its leftover registry entries made the installer recognize it as already installed, when it wasn't. I had a hell of a time resolving that little issue.
Leave it to Microsoft to justify why uninstalling a software product leaves your PC in a less than desirable state.
I hate it when they leave traces because in my use case, if I uninstall because something went wrong and want to reinstall again to fix the issue, the issue remains because of those files.
This is the same man who installed a petabyte server......
let that sink in
I used to use a program called "Revo Uninstaller" when removing unwanted programs on customers computers.
Worked like a dream and never had any problems.
Well... honestly this is a Windows problem. Other OSs usually handle installation and uninstallation themselves, they don't leave that responsibility to the app itself.
Actually not, especially Linux. Most programs still install a lot of dependencies shared across other programs and the system itself and if you check your Home folder there will be a lot of config files even for uninstalled stuff.Other issue is how many programs create special users or ppas (Chrome) just for them and if you uninstall the program, they are left behind too.
There are commands to clean unneeded dependencies, but in many times they are locked behind a lot of warning dialogs, especially in distros tailored to servers, which disable this commands entirely. It is possible to re enable them but they make this more convoluted to do to avoid accidents and for security purposes.
Still remember week one training at Apple. People look at Apple compared to Windows and think it's as easy as picking up a leaf on their yard and tossing in the trash bin. But in reality not all programs are like that. There are a few that are more like lilly pads and you may find uninstalling them by removing the app icon, doesn't totally remove the app, it's files, or it causes issues with the OS or other apps. For these apps it's always good to use the uninstaller that comes with the app vs using Apple's delete option.
That's when I chimed in and said, you should also be doing the same on a Windows PC vs going to control panel and uninstalling it from there.
(Not sure if still a problem, but Windows used to sometimes uninstall the app/program and leave behind the uninstaller among other items vs the uninstaller that usually did a better job)
I can recommend WinDirStat software. It scans your hard drive and lists all directories and files inside sorting them by size. Useful for finding out if folder that takes way too much space is really needed.
So what I am hearing is: "it's not Microsoft's fault. It's everyone else's fault." This message sponsored by Microsoft.
Garry's mod leaves add-ons behind all the time. I uninstall the game but I barely got a gig back, then I check the install directory and see my 78GB are held hostage by all of my add-ons that steam didn't get rid of. Hate when that happens.
I hadn't been using the built-in uninstallers for years
Instead, I'm using Revo Uninstaller
Good program this
There's an additional reason, the files to be removed can be open by the $MFT, the search indexer, the program itself or antivirus and when that is the case windows especially has file locking semantics that prevents file deletion until the lock is removed, other operating systems can often allow deletion of open files, so this may not occur with them.
There's never any guarantee that a file won't be locked, and even getting the file name to enumerate file lists in a directory can cause the file/s to become locked and it can cause silent failure to remove which some uninstallers might not check for, and generally won't retry on failure to prevent annoying the user even if they detect it (except Adobe software, which just loves to piss everyone off)
Thats why I just take the whole folder and bin it
no, bins are programs, not directories!!/s
Random files left around and the registry entries:
And most likely you're far from done. There are tons of programs that leave junk splattered all over your PC, including registry entries.
Back in the day I played the Karoshi Suicide Salaryman games (imagine if an entire game was those Mario Maker levels where the goal is to die but the level won't let you) and one of the other games by the guy who made them used a registry key to enforce its gimmick that you only get one chance to do the right thing, even if you uninstall and reinstall.
"and most leftover files only take over a minuscule amount of space"
Yeah, like windows update......
Excellent video. It's about time someone made a short & sweet video of this topic.
Easy on Linux:
sudo pacman -Rns "program name"
Done, no need to do anything else.
Only on arch based distro.
Me:cries in windows 10 laptpp
@@ArunG273 sudo apt autoremove --purge "program name" for Debian based.
Also I think Red Hat based use yum or Dnf or thing like that.
@@ggldmrd5583 I know. -_-
The biggest part is in the tmp folder or in the update windows installer folder. I forgot the exact path, but in forum they basically told the user to reinstall windows from scratch ...
“Your hard drive has gotten uncomfortably full, and you’ve decided to remedy the issue by uninstalling some unwanted programs.”
*stares at 12 HDDs/SSDs*
Haha yeah...
Some trial software used to intentionally leave registry entries for the purposes of tracking that the software was trialed on the PC before, but nowadays more people would be able to poke in their registry to find and remove that tracker.
Windows: DLL HELL
Good thing I use Linux!
while true ; do
echo "Linux is better"
done
DLL Hell hasn't been a thing since Windows XP.
Ken Smith you can get the same effect with the yes command...
"yes Linux is Better" should work on most distros
@@arnox4554 shutup. I have VC DLL problems even in windows 10 too.
@@ArunG273 I have no idea then what the hell you're doing with your PC.
Linux and all the dependencies are tracked, there are no junk files, all the software gets updated automatically (or exactly the way you want), it doesn't require restarts even if you are running the drivers or software that is updated. There is no maintenance, no viruses, just the best security and stability, and you can run the whole operating system in 200-500mb of RAM, and as the software itself needs less ram to run in most cases, 2gb is plenty enough for common Internet / office use.
Linus, here's a request. Please make a video "How to install Nvidia Control Panel (Rant)".
I like to use old app called WinDirStat to check what amount of data is stored in which folders. Very useful - it visualizes data amounts and file types by folders.
Damn they really out here removing firefox
*ALL HAIL FIREFOX, BEST BROWSER OF ALL BROWSERS!*
They are just showing Firefox 'coz it's better! xD
Microsoft Edge is the BEST! Period.
No w3m is best web browser
To be completely fair, they did get better at cleaning after themselves. Like in most cases, only settings, user profile and few registry keys, which usually contain certain program wide settings, will remain behind. So if you reinstall it, it might ask fewer questions, it might not need to ask for serial number, though with online activation this is less of an issue and will of course resume where you left off. But yeah, if you really want to clean up, grab Revo Uninstaller, free version will do decent job at running uninstaller, then scanning for leftovers and cleaning. Though be mindful about saves for games, because you can have situation where saves on cloud for the game aren't up to date... just recently happened to me with Fallen Order, so I got 2 gaming sessions worth of rollback. Which is also what games mostly leave behind. Same goes for any other data, so don't just select all and delete.
If you really want to clean your system up, here are few things you can do, do them at your own responsibility, because you can break things. And while they should be fixable with fresh Winodws install, you might want to be careful, so you don't have to deal with hassle. Still, it is things I do to keep system clean.
Check Documents and subfolders for any game folder left over, a lot of games will keep saves and settings there, as well as recordings, if they support gameplay recording. Then also go to C drive, in Folder Options enable "Show hidden folders and files" and open "Program Data", some programs keep data and saved settings there. Afterwards, also go back to C, open Users, open your userrname, open "AppData" and it has three subfolders, some programs leave data there too. Do bare in mind, that sometimes they will leave it in developer/publisher folder and then game folder. However do bare in mind that this will break programs, if you delete anything you shouldn't. Microsoft folder for example might contain data parts of Windows need to work properly.
For further cleaning you also have C, Windows, Temp. Files in Temp folder are temporary, so they will just get recreated and are safe to delete. And C, Users, username, AppData, Local and Temp, files in this folder are mostly also safe to delete, thought there are few uninstall programs that rely on data there to uninstall program or game, so it may or may not break uninstaller or two. But this isn't frequent, though cleaner be aware.
As for registy, that one even I advise to leave alone. It is easy to permanently break something by deleting wrong keys there. Generally, I only recommend you to do it if you get issue you can't fix in any other way. Like application insisting it is installed, when there are no other traces of it on the system, I only once got that and had to clean out registry. But otherwise it basically impacts nothing, since even bloated registry is still tiny in comparison to most things you got in RAM. And unused keys there will simply be ignored.
As for safer way to clean junk on disk, just use Disk Clenup Utility build in Windows. Make sure to also hit to check for system files. Other than that, it mostly is advanced stuff, like using DriveStoreExploler to remove backup copies of old drivers which Windows keeps hoarding and most people don't need. Mostly it is harmless, but when you got 500MB per display driver and you got 10-20 versions, that is 5-10GB over time, so it might be worth cleaning up. DSE has one button solution to select old drivers and then hit delete so generally it is safe-ish enough for general recommendation. And sometimes WinSXS gets bloated, so you can use Command Prompt with administrator privileges, to clean it up with command:
Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
If you are ok losing ability to roll back updates, you can also wipe backups of older versions that aren't used anymore:
Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
And that is it with bolat cleanup, beside uninstalling stuff you don't need.
Last time I was this Early, the Luftwaffe has Aerial Superiority over Europe!
Last time I was early, Otto Von Bismarck had control over Prussia!
"the only times we need to worry about remnant files if they take up too much space or if we have something to hide"
But what about the possibility of malicious files?
Use Linux Problem Solved!!!
(apt autoremove program --purge)
there used to be something called DLL Hell where several programs relied on different versions of a DLL file.
TL;DR: Lazy developers.
More like TL;DW
I hab skjsiebahdogjWk
In Mac, you often can’t uninstall a program like on windows, you just have to drag app from applications folder to trash can. On linux, everything handled by apt, yum (there is I believe new repository mgmt tool on fedora)and snaps.
The last time i was so early, linus didn't have a beard
Minecraft leaves old versions of the game installed to the Appdata folder with every update, those can pile up too.
And now the people saying 'first' or something like that are leaving their junk behind on this comments section.
asdfghjkl like u
This is why WIndows needs a package manager, specifically a sandboxed package manager so everything can easily be located.