Exids IT Solutions

After time you computer starts to collect junk like the attic of an old house theres a lot of things you used once or twice but youve tossed them aside and forgotten about them.

In this particular instance I’m talking about software that you have installed that you no longer use.

Software that you may no longer use could be games, application, utilities, tools, or out of date security products (which by the way is very bad).

How NOT to get rid of software

A lot of people make the mistake of going on a treasure hunt throughout their folders and files deleting stuff that doesnt look like it belongs.

NEVER do this.

The second you do this you are risking breaking other working programs, and even if you do remove files that are no longer needed you probably wont find the file and information that was installed in your computer when the file was first created.

What is a DLL File, and why shouldn’t I delete them?

DLL stands for Dynamic Link Library.

You’ve probably seen these files scattered everywhere all over your system and have been wondering what they do. DLL files are usually an extremely important part of Windows, and without them your computer simply would not be able to run.

A lot of software also requires the use of DLLs to operate properly. Not all software has its own DLLs created specifically for its own purposes many of the DLLs that come prepackaged with windows help developers write programs that interface and work properly when ran in a Windows Operating System.

DLLs are unique in that they can be shared by many programs at one time. They contain information that is globally useful, and allow this to be shared amongst many other programs and software operating at the same time in your computer.

So now you may understand why you cant just go around deleting files. If you delete a DLL that you think belongs to one program, you may actually be deleting a file that belongs to several programs which will prevent ALL of them from working properly.

How to get rid of Software Safetly: Add or Remove Programs

Use Add or Remove Programs to remove software completely.

The Add or 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.

We hear a lot of people asking us how to delete a program or how to get rid of a program. If you 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 you couldnt possible find everything and may risk breaking other programs.

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. Even if you could delete all of the files for a program on a computer, all the entries in the registry would impossible to remove completely.

This is where Add or remove Programs comes in. Not only does Add or 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 written by developers 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 read from the database so that it knows exactly what needs to be removed.

How to open the Add or Remove programs applet

Add or Remove programs is basically an application built into Windows that lists all of the programs that are currently installed in your computer. You can use Add or Remove programs to uninstall any one of the items listed in it.

There are two methods of doing this.

Method 1:

Step 1. Click Start > Settings > Control Panel to open the control panel.
Step 2. Locate the icon Add or Remove Programs and double click it.

Method 2:

Step 1. Click Start > Run.
Step 2. Type in "control appwiz.cpl" without the quotes.
Step 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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