When is an uninstall not an uninstall?
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You clearly have not tried to support users. The vast majority have no idea what a word document is or even where to find one on their machine. Many are lost when the documents no longer appear in their recent list.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
Amen Brother!
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. or "Drink. Get drunk. Fall over." - P O'H
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So I've been using MS Office 2010 beta for a while, and as it's time is running out, I dutifully bought a genuine version. Before installing it, I went (via Control Panel) and uninstalled the beta version. Re-booted, and installed the new... ...and much to my (naive?) surprise, when I ran Outlook for the first time, I saw that everything about my beta installation was still there! All my email accounts, toolbars and even macros. And it was using the .pst files from the beat version, which I moved from their default location to somewhere more accessihble. Makes me wonder: what, exactly, had my "uninstall" removed? As it happens, it's quite useful not having to re set up all my acounts, and .pst files etc, but suppose I had decided that I no longer wanted to use Office after the beta trial? Or that I wanted to sell/give this computer to someone else... I wuld have thought that by unistalling it I had safely removed all amy account information and emails, but in fact they were clearly not removed at all. At the very least, I feel I should have been warned....
My laptop came with a "trial" Office 2007 preinstalled. I didn't want it, as I had a spare licence for Office 2003 (which doesn't do all that pseudo-XML @#$%^ X| ). I did all the right things to uninstall it, but every week for the last year or more Windows Update wants to install some update to Powerpoint 2007 (which I don't think was even included in the trial). If anyone knows any way to kill the update once and for all, I'd be most grateful.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994.
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My laptop came with a "trial" Office 2007 preinstalled. I didn't want it, as I had a spare licence for Office 2003 (which doesn't do all that pseudo-XML @#$%^ X| ). I did all the right things to uninstall it, but every week for the last year or more Windows Update wants to install some update to Powerpoint 2007 (which I don't think was even included in the trial). If anyone knows any way to kill the update once and for all, I'd be most grateful.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994.
PowerPoint is installed in all trial copies of Office 2007 as far as I know. If it wasn't, then they probably installed PowerPoint 2007 Viewer, so take a look in your programs for something like that.
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So I've been using MS Office 2010 beta for a while, and as it's time is running out, I dutifully bought a genuine version. Before installing it, I went (via Control Panel) and uninstalled the beta version. Re-booted, and installed the new... ...and much to my (naive?) surprise, when I ran Outlook for the first time, I saw that everything about my beta installation was still there! All my email accounts, toolbars and even macros. And it was using the .pst files from the beat version, which I moved from their default location to somewhere more accessihble. Makes me wonder: what, exactly, had my "uninstall" removed? As it happens, it's quite useful not having to re set up all my acounts, and .pst files etc, but suppose I had decided that I no longer wanted to use Office after the beta trial? Or that I wanted to sell/give this computer to someone else... I wuld have thought that by unistalling it I had safely removed all amy account information and emails, but in fact they were clearly not removed at all. At the very least, I feel I should have been warned....
Did you try this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301[^] it's worked for me a couple of times - but not every time. Revo Uninstaller Free has also worked for getting rid of Office 2007 & MS Live components.
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My laptop came with a "trial" Office 2007 preinstalled. I didn't want it, as I had a spare licence for Office 2003 (which doesn't do all that pseudo-XML @#$%^ X| ). I did all the right things to uninstall it, but every week for the last year or more Windows Update wants to install some update to Powerpoint 2007 (which I don't think was even included in the trial). If anyone knows any way to kill the update once and for all, I'd be most grateful.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994.
Either right-click it and click 'hide' or check the box that is either 'hide' or 'do not show again'. Depends whether you're using the website or desktop updater.
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You clearly have not tried to support users. The vast majority have no idea what a word document is or even where to find one on their machine. Many are lost when the documents no longer appear in their recent list.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
Indeed. The 'documents' in our application contain setup parameters for a machine. You would not believe how many of our customers have a single file named "
.CS410" in their My Documents folder.Software Zen:
delete this; -
So I've been using MS Office 2010 beta for a while, and as it's time is running out, I dutifully bought a genuine version. Before installing it, I went (via Control Panel) and uninstalled the beta version. Re-booted, and installed the new... ...and much to my (naive?) surprise, when I ran Outlook for the first time, I saw that everything about my beta installation was still there! All my email accounts, toolbars and even macros. And it was using the .pst files from the beat version, which I moved from their default location to somewhere more accessihble. Makes me wonder: what, exactly, had my "uninstall" removed? As it happens, it's quite useful not having to re set up all my acounts, and .pst files etc, but suppose I had decided that I no longer wanted to use Office after the beta trial? Or that I wanted to sell/give this computer to someone else... I wuld have thought that by unistalling it I had safely removed all amy account information and emails, but in fact they were clearly not removed at all. At the very least, I feel I should have been warned....
I've always thought that the standard Microsoft "uninstall" through the control panel is dreadful. Before you can install a new version of the program, you have to uninstall the old version. If the installation of the old version somehow got corrupted and you're missing a file from it, attempting to uninstall the application through the control panel will probably fail, and since you can't install a new version until you've uninstalled the old version, you're locked into a vicious circle and at the mercy of the program vendor's customer support to walk you through a manual uninstall. God help you if that vendor is Microsoft, because it could cost you hundreds of dollars for a service call. I think your intuitive understanding of what "uninstall" means is common: that all traces of the program and its data should be wiped from the computer. The problem with this understanding is that it fails to distinguish between data files that the program creates through deliberate efforts on the part of the user and program settings that the program creates to control the behavior of the program when it runs. Program settings should be maintained in a location well-known to the program (usually in a location like
C:\Users\login-name\application-vendor\application-name) so that when the user instructs the program to uninstall itself it can uninstall its program files and its settings. However, when a program creates data files, the user is usually allowed to create the data files anywhere it wants in the file system, and the program is not expected to keep track of where these data files are. In fact, after the files have been created, the user can move them around and the user still expects to be able to "edit" them with the program. Often, the files that the program creates are not in a proprietary format and they can be edited by other programs that the user might have, which is another reason why data files should not be deleted when the user asks to uninstall a program. Most of the time, what people want to do is update to the latest version of a program, not uninstall every last trace of a program. Having to go through the Microsoft control panel "uninstall" before you can update to the latest version is unfortunate, due to the problem described in my first paragraph. The operation of uninstalling should be a radical wipe of every last trace of a program and all of its settings, but none of the data files. Unfortunately, there is a reason why Microsoft wants you to go -
IMO, it's not quite the same thing - Word documents are one thing, and every user knowws where they are and how to use them A .pst file is useless to your average Joe. I just feel I should have had to choose whether to keep them on my system or not.
You must kept the .pst file as it is required by your outlook
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I've always thought that the standard Microsoft "uninstall" through the control panel is dreadful. Before you can install a new version of the program, you have to uninstall the old version. If the installation of the old version somehow got corrupted and you're missing a file from it, attempting to uninstall the application through the control panel will probably fail, and since you can't install a new version until you've uninstalled the old version, you're locked into a vicious circle and at the mercy of the program vendor's customer support to walk you through a manual uninstall. God help you if that vendor is Microsoft, because it could cost you hundreds of dollars for a service call. I think your intuitive understanding of what "uninstall" means is common: that all traces of the program and its data should be wiped from the computer. The problem with this understanding is that it fails to distinguish between data files that the program creates through deliberate efforts on the part of the user and program settings that the program creates to control the behavior of the program when it runs. Program settings should be maintained in a location well-known to the program (usually in a location like
C:\Users\login-name\application-vendor\application-name) so that when the user instructs the program to uninstall itself it can uninstall its program files and its settings. However, when a program creates data files, the user is usually allowed to create the data files anywhere it wants in the file system, and the program is not expected to keep track of where these data files are. In fact, after the files have been created, the user can move them around and the user still expects to be able to "edit" them with the program. Often, the files that the program creates are not in a proprietary format and they can be edited by other programs that the user might have, which is another reason why data files should not be deleted when the user asks to uninstall a program. Most of the time, what people want to do is update to the latest version of a program, not uninstall every last trace of a program. Having to go through the Microsoft control panel "uninstall" before you can update to the latest version is unfortunate, due to the problem described in my first paragraph. The operation of uninstalling should be a radical wipe of every last trace of a program and all of its settings, but none of the data files. Unfortunately, there is a reason why Microsoft wants you to goOne thing that sometimes gets overlooked is registry entries. I had a Microsoft program that somehow got corrupted, and required panels and windows would not show. I uninstalled the program and reinstalled it, only to find that nothing had changed. It was only after I found the registry entries and deleted them all that the program reset and began working properly again. I expect that an uninstall will remove registry entries that the program created, but that is apparently not the case.
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One thing that sometimes gets overlooked is registry entries. I had a Microsoft program that somehow got corrupted, and required panels and windows would not show. I uninstalled the program and reinstalled it, only to find that nothing had changed. It was only after I found the registry entries and deleted them all that the program reset and began working properly again. I expect that an uninstall will remove registry entries that the program created, but that is apparently not the case.
Well, it would be absolutely unforgivable not to uninstall Registry entries, since that is an ancient technology that everyone knows about. However, it is old-fashioned to use the Registry anymore for program settings and deprecated. None of my applications have touched the Registry since Vista came out.
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I've always thought that the standard Microsoft "uninstall" through the control panel is dreadful. Before you can install a new version of the program, you have to uninstall the old version. If the installation of the old version somehow got corrupted and you're missing a file from it, attempting to uninstall the application through the control panel will probably fail, and since you can't install a new version until you've uninstalled the old version, you're locked into a vicious circle and at the mercy of the program vendor's customer support to walk you through a manual uninstall. God help you if that vendor is Microsoft, because it could cost you hundreds of dollars for a service call. I think your intuitive understanding of what "uninstall" means is common: that all traces of the program and its data should be wiped from the computer. The problem with this understanding is that it fails to distinguish between data files that the program creates through deliberate efforts on the part of the user and program settings that the program creates to control the behavior of the program when it runs. Program settings should be maintained in a location well-known to the program (usually in a location like
C:\Users\login-name\application-vendor\application-name) so that when the user instructs the program to uninstall itself it can uninstall its program files and its settings. However, when a program creates data files, the user is usually allowed to create the data files anywhere it wants in the file system, and the program is not expected to keep track of where these data files are. In fact, after the files have been created, the user can move them around and the user still expects to be able to "edit" them with the program. Often, the files that the program creates are not in a proprietary format and they can be edited by other programs that the user might have, which is another reason why data files should not be deleted when the user asks to uninstall a program. Most of the time, what people want to do is update to the latest version of a program, not uninstall every last trace of a program. Having to go through the Microsoft control panel "uninstall" before you can update to the latest version is unfortunate, due to the problem described in my first paragraph. The operation of uninstalling should be a radical wipe of every last trace of a program and all of its settings, but none of the data files. Unfortunately, there is a reason why Microsoft wants you to goThanks God it does exist Revo Uninstaller Pro... I routinely use it to wipe out whatever traces a program that I want to completely uninstall tries to left behind itself, either in the registry or in configuration files.... It saved me many problems many times....
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Thanks God it does exist Revo Uninstaller Pro... I routinely use it to wipe out whatever traces a program that I want to completely uninstall tries to left behind itself, either in the registry or in configuration files.... It saved me many problems many times....
Do you know if Revo Uninstaller Pro would solve the problem of the control panel uninstall failing because the installation somehow got corrupt and it found one or more files missing that were supposed to be present? The control panel uninstall simply quits, and then you can't install a new version, because the old version hasn't been uninstalled. This happened to me with the beta version of Visual Studio 2010. I paid for the release version but it wouldn't install because the beta version wouldn't uninstall. I contacted Microsoft tech support and they spent about 8 hours on the phone with me over a period of 3 days, finally resulting in a manual uninstall a "piece" at a time until every last trace was gone. If Revo Uninstaller Pro could accomplish this "automatically", it sounds as if the developers know more about Microsoft's uninstall process than Microsoft itself. Otherwise, why couldn't Microsoft itself do something like that? Why wouldn't Microsoft itself have some automatic tool like Revo Uninstaller Pro? I just looked up Revo Uninstaller Pro and apparently it starts by running a program's regular uninstaller. But they don't say what happens if the regular installer abnormally terminates. I'm in a situation right now where I'm afraid to move from Silverlight 4 beta to the released version because I'm afraid I won't be able to uninstall the beta. I have no reason to think that the uninstall of the beta would fail but this is precisely what happened to some people with Silverlight 4 beta. They try to uninstall it, they get partially the way through, and it quits. Then they no longer have a working beta, they can't reinstall the beta without first uninstalling it, and they can't install the released version until the beta is uninstalled. So it is now impossible for them to develop with Silverlight 4, beta or otherwise. Positively demonic. So I'll probably just run with the beta forever.
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Do you know if Revo Uninstaller Pro would solve the problem of the control panel uninstall failing because the installation somehow got corrupt and it found one or more files missing that were supposed to be present? The control panel uninstall simply quits, and then you can't install a new version, because the old version hasn't been uninstalled. This happened to me with the beta version of Visual Studio 2010. I paid for the release version but it wouldn't install because the beta version wouldn't uninstall. I contacted Microsoft tech support and they spent about 8 hours on the phone with me over a period of 3 days, finally resulting in a manual uninstall a "piece" at a time until every last trace was gone. If Revo Uninstaller Pro could accomplish this "automatically", it sounds as if the developers know more about Microsoft's uninstall process than Microsoft itself. Otherwise, why couldn't Microsoft itself do something like that? Why wouldn't Microsoft itself have some automatic tool like Revo Uninstaller Pro? I just looked up Revo Uninstaller Pro and apparently it starts by running a program's regular uninstaller. But they don't say what happens if the regular installer abnormally terminates. I'm in a situation right now where I'm afraid to move from Silverlight 4 beta to the released version because I'm afraid I won't be able to uninstall the beta. I have no reason to think that the uninstall of the beta would fail but this is precisely what happened to some people with Silverlight 4 beta. They try to uninstall it, they get partially the way through, and it quits. Then they no longer have a working beta, they can't reinstall the beta without first uninstalling it, and they can't install the released version until the beta is uninstalled. So it is now impossible for them to develop with Silverlight 4, beta or otherwise. Positively demonic. So I'll probably just run with the beta forever.
fjparisIII wrote:
I just looked up Revo Uninstaller Pro and apparently it starts by running a program's regular uninstaller. But they don't say what happens if the regular installer abnormally terminates.
Yes, that is what it does initially. Then, after the termination, normal or abnormal, of the regular uninstaller, it starts a thorough scan (you can choose how thorough it must be) of the registry, finding all the remnants of the just "uninstalled" program, including the registry entries used by the Windows uninstaller. Then you have the choice of selecting which entries you want to delete. Usually this frees completely the PC from any traces of the program you want to get rid of. In my case, it saved my a.. many times :) Good luck !
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fjparisIII wrote:
I just looked up Revo Uninstaller Pro and apparently it starts by running a program's regular uninstaller. But they don't say what happens if the regular installer abnormally terminates.
Yes, that is what it does initially. Then, after the termination, normal or abnormal, of the regular uninstaller, it starts a thorough scan (you can choose how thorough it must be) of the registry, finding all the remnants of the just "uninstalled" program, including the registry entries used by the Windows uninstaller. Then you have the choice of selecting which entries you want to delete. Usually this frees completely the PC from any traces of the program you want to get rid of. In my case, it saved my a.. many times :) Good luck !
adibene wrote:
Then, after the termination, normal or abnormal, of the regular uninstaller, it starts a thorough scan (you can choose how thorough it must be)
Why would one not choose to be as thorough as possible? Is there a danger in being "too thorough," a chance of removing something not associated with the program you want to uninstall? Or is Revo absolutely certain that everything it gives you a choice about was actually created for the program to run?
adibene wrote:
Then you have the choice of selecting which entries you want to delete.
This is also worrisome. How can you be sure which entries you should choose? Doesn't this assume that you understand how the internals of the program work? What if you make the wrong choice? It could be that Revo only deals with programs that have standard uninstall programs available through the control panel, in which case it is compensating for deficiencies and bugs in that standard installation program. I don't see how it could work with a program that stores its configuration in a folder known only to the program and that doesn't touch the Registry. Such a program would not use a standard uninstall program, but would have its own, custom-built uninstall that Microsoft doesn't know anything about. Revo wouldn't know anything about it either. A well-behaved custom-built uninstall would use such .NET calls as the following:
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData). Then it would append its own path within this standard location, but that appended path would be hard-coded in the program and its uninstall and not registered anywhere else. Such programs can have simple uninstalls, regardless of how complex the program configuration data is, because it's all contained within a single folder hierarchy which can be as deep and complex as is necessary. Then the only thing the uninstall program has to do is delete the folder containing its program files somewhere inc:\Program Filesfollowed by the deletion of its top level program configuration folder. The location of its program files would be stored somewhere in its program configuration folder. (NaturallyC:\Program Fileswould not be hard-coded. It's path would be obtained from the following .NET call:Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFiles).) Of course there are other thi -
adibene wrote:
Then, after the termination, normal or abnormal, of the regular uninstaller, it starts a thorough scan (you can choose how thorough it must be)
Why would one not choose to be as thorough as possible? Is there a danger in being "too thorough," a chance of removing something not associated with the program you want to uninstall? Or is Revo absolutely certain that everything it gives you a choice about was actually created for the program to run?
adibene wrote:
Then you have the choice of selecting which entries you want to delete.
This is also worrisome. How can you be sure which entries you should choose? Doesn't this assume that you understand how the internals of the program work? What if you make the wrong choice? It could be that Revo only deals with programs that have standard uninstall programs available through the control panel, in which case it is compensating for deficiencies and bugs in that standard installation program. I don't see how it could work with a program that stores its configuration in a folder known only to the program and that doesn't touch the Registry. Such a program would not use a standard uninstall program, but would have its own, custom-built uninstall that Microsoft doesn't know anything about. Revo wouldn't know anything about it either. A well-behaved custom-built uninstall would use such .NET calls as the following:
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData). Then it would append its own path within this standard location, but that appended path would be hard-coded in the program and its uninstall and not registered anywhere else. Such programs can have simple uninstalls, regardless of how complex the program configuration data is, because it's all contained within a single folder hierarchy which can be as deep and complex as is necessary. Then the only thing the uninstall program has to do is delete the folder containing its program files somewhere inc:\Program Filesfollowed by the deletion of its top level program configuration folder. The location of its program files would be stored somewhere in its program configuration folder. (NaturallyC:\Program Fileswould not be hard-coded. It's path would be obtained from the following .NET call:Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFiles).) Of course there are other thifjparisIII wrote:
Why would one not choose to be as thorough as possible? Is there a danger in being "too thorough," a chance of removing something not associated with the program you want to uninstall? Or is Revo absolutely certain that everything it gives you a choice about was actually created for the program to run?
The perfection is not of this world. There always is a margin for errors, even for a well written program. What Revo does is to forbid you to delete things that it is sure do not belong to the program being uninstalled. It marks as deletable all what potentially belongs to that program. Then you have to apply your own judgment to remove the "delete this" flag from the items you recognize as being erroneously flagged. All of this imply a certain knowledge of how the registry is structured, and what the main entries are. If this scares you, then Revo is not the program for you. Uninstalling errant programs is more of an art than a science, and some sort of cooperation from the user is needed. But if you know what you are doing, Revo is a powerful tool in your hands.
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fjparisIII wrote:
Why would one not choose to be as thorough as possible? Is there a danger in being "too thorough," a chance of removing something not associated with the program you want to uninstall? Or is Revo absolutely certain that everything it gives you a choice about was actually created for the program to run?
The perfection is not of this world. There always is a margin for errors, even for a well written program. What Revo does is to forbid you to delete things that it is sure do not belong to the program being uninstalled. It marks as deletable all what potentially belongs to that program. Then you have to apply your own judgment to remove the "delete this" flag from the items you recognize as being erroneously flagged. All of this imply a certain knowledge of how the registry is structured, and what the main entries are. If this scares you, then Revo is not the program for you. Uninstalling errant programs is more of an art than a science, and some sort of cooperation from the user is needed. But if you know what you are doing, Revo is a powerful tool in your hands.
I guess my point is that the standard Microsoft install/uninstall is fundamentally flawed. Otherwise we wouldn't even need programs like Revo. But it's firmly entrenched in the Microsoft world and is not likely to be replaced with an entirely different architecture that would solve these problems.
adibene wrote:
All of this imply a certain knowledge of how the registry is structured, and what the main entries are. If this scares you, then Revo is not the program for you.
I presume you're using the editorial "you." Personally, before Vista came out, I programmed the Registry forwards, backwards, and upside-down. I abandoned it because Microsoft itself started recommending not using it for program configuration. The Registry just got too bloated and proved to be too fragile. The Registry is now best reserved for system parameters that have nothing to do with application programs.