Get an Uninstaller

Get an Uninstaller not a new hard drive for your PC

By: William Brautigam

In the beginning days of the PC, there was DOS’s file and directory delete commands, to get rid of unwanted programs. Then, one day, along came the “Windows” operating environment, and life got a good bit more complicated. Elaborate installation routines were necessary to load even the most basic windows programs. Unlike DOS programs, Windows programs shared directories, and files in those directories, and other files in other directories, and program drivers, and object and dynamic link libraries, and other “secret” associations that defied detection by even the most experienced of PC users. All this makes for a quickly and needlessly filled hard drive. Yet, attempting to remove files or eliminate unwanted programs becomes a nightmare, often leaving many Megabytes of unwanted files on your new “I’ll never outgrow this” hard drive.

The original “Uninstaller” v1.0 from MicroHelp came to our rescue. The program promised to efficiently and easily remove unwanted programs, unused files, eliminate font bloat and even warn us of shared files that may have been installed by one program but are still necessary for use by another. As always with software, it was followed by a new improved version 2.0, which became a Windows 3.1 best-seller and set the benchmark for those look-alike programs that soon followed. It seemed like all was well in system efficiency land, when the copycats appeared on the scene. Each offered unique approaches and interfaces. It seemed like a power user’s paradise. Then along came Windows 95 and matters took a turn for the worse. Installing a program in Windows 95 puts so many files in so many places on your hard drive it is almost like you fired a shotgun at your hard drive and the resultant imbedded ammo is represented by the files spread all over your system. Add to this, the profusion of files that voluntarily and unbeknown to us, get loaded onto our systems when we browse the Internet. Uninstallers offer an easy way to keep track of what we add to our systems, including those sneeky Internet files, as a relatively safe way to remove them, to free space on our hard drives whenever we want.

Following are the four most popular Uninstaller Programs on the market today. They are CleanSweep Extra Strength v4.0 by Quarterdeck, Remove-It 98 v3.0 by Quarterdeck, Uninstaller v4.5 by CyberMedia (formerly a MicroHelp product) and Norton Uninstall Deluxe by Symantec. The programs’ system requirements are as indicated in the accompanying table.

Product	Mb RAM Req.	Disc Space	Win95 support	WinNT4 support	DOS support	MSRP
CleanSweep	8/16/16**	13Mb	Yes	Yes	No	$59.99
Remove-It 98	4/4/0***	5Mb	Yes	No	Yes	$19.95
Uninstaller 4.5	8/16/16**	8Mb	Yes	Yes	No	$39.95
Norton Uninstall	8/16/16**	10Mb	Yes	Yes	No	$39.95
* Windows 95 required Windows 95 recommended *Windows NT required

The programs share some common capabilities and characteristics:
• extensive installation knowledge base (over 1000 programs)
• logging of program installations for thorough program removals
• find and remove many type of unneeded files from the hard drive
• create archives of programs and files for later usage to save space
• create self-installing program backups for use on another PC
• move programs to different drives or folders (directories)

Which one is right for you?
The programs all perform similar functions but some do more, better and faster than others do. Depending upon your system and what you want to accomplish with your uninstaller program we can help you select just the right one. Just look at the following questions and see just which question or questions describe/satisfy your need.

Do you have DOS or Windows 3.x?
Remove-It 98 is the only program that will log a Windows 3.x installation.

Are you a novice?
Any of the programs are easy to use, the wizards and on-line help make using them a simple task. Once again Remove-It 98’s simplified interface and relative lack of user options make this your best bet.

Do you make extensive use of the Internet?
CleanSweep Extra Strength offers so many more clean-up options than the competition that it is by far the best choice for keeping your hard drive clean of those unwanted and often buried Internet download or pushed files.

Do you frequently install and then want to remove a lot of programs?
All of the programs do a fine job of removing unwanted programs but only Norton’s Uninstall Deluxe keeps a separate copy of every file removed or replaced during an installation. Reversing the last and only the last program installed is fast and totally complete. It only keeps the last program’s installation replaced files separate. When the next program is installed your best bet to remove a program is the program’s installation log.

Is speed of installation monitoring or simple cleanups important?
Nothing is faster or even close to CleanSweep Extra Strength. Remove-It 98 is only marginally slower than Clean Sweep Extra Strength but the nod must go to CleanSweep. The reason for this is the Quarterdeck products create installation logs proactively. They track registry and system changes as they occur. The Norton and CyberMedia products take a before and after snapshot of your system and then log all differences. This represents a 5-10 fold increase in time.

No matter which uninstaller you decide to select, you can only do better than the apple that Microsoft included with Windows 95, Add/Remove Programs. It makes mistakes and these programs are relatively error free and make backup copies of removed items for your security and peace of mind.