Exids IT Solutions

…use “Add or Remove Programs” to remove software completely

The “Add/Remove programs” applet is built into windows to allow you to easily see what programs are currently installed, and to give you the ability to remove them automatically.

I hear a lot of people asking me “how to delete a program” or “how to get rid of a program”.  If I were to go through a computer manually deleting all the files, settings and registry entries that were installed with a program, it would not only take hours, but I couldn’t possible find everything. 

The reason why manually removing software would be so painful and slow is that many programs store information in something called the “registry”.  The registry contains settings and other valuable configuration information many programs need to run properly.  I could delete all of the files for a program on a computer, but the entries in the registry would impossible to remove completely.

Welcome Add/remove Programs.  Not only does add/remove programs remove the files and folder associated with a program, but it also removes information that was written to the registry when it was installed.

When you install most programs, they use something called an “Installer”.  An installer is a piece of software that programs use to install files, folders and write registry information.  This installer records all the information written into the registry and stores it into a database.  When you uninstall software, this information is pulled out of the database so that it knows exactly what needs to be removed.

“Add/Remove programs” is basically a program that list all of the programs that are currently installed in your computer.  You can use Add/Remove programs to uninstall any one of the items listed in it.

How to open Add/Remove programs

There are two methods of doing this.

Method 1: 

1. Click “start > settings > control panel” to open the control panel.
2. Locate the icon “Add or Remove Programs” and double click it

Method 2:

1. Click Start > Run
2. Type in “control appwiz.cpl” without the quotes.
3. Click OK.

When the “Add or Remove Programs” applet opens, you can locate the program(s) you want to remove, and uninstall it completely!

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