Is Vista's Uninstaller Good enough?

Is it's Add & Remove programs good enough? Or should I get a 3rd party uninstaller?

 

Use CCleaner (formerly known as Crap Cleaner). It is an essential tool

or revo uninstaller

 

Agree with the above. Here's the link for Revo...

http://www.revouninstaller.com/

 

From the CCleaner site, it looks as if I'll have to manually do the registry deleting? Is Revo automated?

 

CCleaner is a amazing tool. Try it out, it automates pretty much everything for you, no manual editing required. I run it weekly to clean out my temp folders, delete programs, etc.

 

Can I install and use both Revo and CCleaner or will they screw each other up?

 

You Can use Both CCleaner is Disk Cleaner but Revo Uninstaller is Full Featured Uninstaller.

 

agree with vinsum. using both in my laptop and works great. be careful though with the registry cleaner and crap cleaning of revo. very agressive. need to reinstal my os after using revo to remove all the craps in my NB. for routing cleaning safest to use the ccleaner

 

Not that I'm saying that such is the case, but you know an operating system is in a sad state when you have to install a 3rd party program just to get an OS task done. I ask you, what is wrong with the Windows uninstaller?

 

I think I'll step out here and defend Windows with this issue. Uninstalling programs that you install is not a function that is hard coded into Windows. The uninstall feature in Control Panel mainly just calls the uninstaller provided by the program you have installed. The process of uninstalling consists of two main procedures: (1) removing program files from the computer and (2) removing registry entries created by the program.

If the program is well behaved, it will remove all the files that it installed and all the registry entries it created during it's install process and during it's use. Windows does not track every single file and registry entry associated with every executable because that would be a drain on resources, not to mention the logic that would be needed to implement it when files/entries are moved and changed by various programs.

It is important to understand that the registry is basically a big global repository for OS and program settings. Any program can access any part of it and write settings and data to it. There are many other ways to store program settings, such as with INI files, XML, etc. But the reason the registry is often chosen is because it is global in the context of the operating system and is one of the fastest ways to quickly retrieve/save data.

There is no reason why the uninstallers provided by your programs cannot do a full uninstall. Its just that many companies/programmers chose to leave files and registry entries on your computer no matter what you do. They reason that at some point in the future you will reinstall the program again and they want to keep old settings on there so they will know what you want the reinstalled program's settings to be at.

As a programmer, I personally don't support the practice of leaving files and registry settings around when the user wants to uninstall a program because eventually, it will leave files all over the place and orphaned registry settings. But, this should be blamed on the programs, not on Windows.

Note: Programs that are Shareware or have an expiry date often just leave an entry in the registry to indicate that they were installed on the computer in the past and to not allow the program to run again.