I’m always shocked at how many program leave remnants in the Windows registry after I’ve uninstalled them. Some Microsoft programs like Office are some of the worst offenders. Many uninstallers save your program directory, but that’s usually easy to delete by searching your folder structure under C:Program Files. I only do this if I’ve already run the program uninstaller found under Start/Settings/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs.
But if you want to see all the crap these programs leave behind in the registry you’ll need a dedicated registry cleaning like CCleaner or Abexo’s Registry Cleaner. If you’ve been running the same version of Windows for a while, run one of these programs and you’re likely to find hundreds of left-over registry entries that’s just bloating your registry and slowing down your system. I run both of these programs weekly and have removed thousands of unwanted entries left over by programs that should have been uninstalled.
But what I’ve noticed lately is making me wonder if companies are getting lazy when writing a good uninstaller or if the Window registry is such a rat’s nest that it’s next to impossible to extract unused entries without manual effort. This require diving into the registry by running ‘regedit’ from the command line which I strongly advise against unless you understand what you’re doing.
Is it time for Microsoft to replace the registry with a more sensible, understandable approach that allows 3rd parties to fully remove every file and entry when the user no longer has need for that particular program? I haven’t come across anything pertaining to Windows Vista that leads me to believe we’ll be any better off once it arrives.
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