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Looking for a good Uninstaller App

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moerl:
Would anyone happen to be able to recommend a good uninstallation app as an alternative to Windoze's ADD/REMOVE applet? I've been using Your Uninstaller! 2004 for a while now and actually liked it quite a bit. What bugs me now is that they have not updated their product in over a year. Their website has not changed one bit in over a year. I did a search on Betanews.com and actually found that they have a beta of the 2005 version out now: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Your_Uninstaller_2005/1031658821/1 - however, none of that is remarked or mentioned in any way on their website. It's a bit confusing..

I found this, http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Easy_Uninstaller/1090863253/1 and this: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/myuninst.html. Give me some opinions and shout out recommendations if you have any ;)

Thanks

mouser:
i'm curious to hear opinions as well.
the nirsoft one has been mentioned before and suits me well but all i use mine for is to sort by date of install.

one app that has gotten some very glowing recommendations that i *still* have yet to try but keep meaning to is "Total Uninstall" (or is it total uninstallER?)

i'm looking forward to reading any follow up replies here.

moerl:
How the hell do I always fail to mention Total Uninstall? I'm a raving TU fan. I'm known at dslr.net to have a fanatic obsession with TU3 because I love it so much :). I used its older versions and jumped with joy when I found that Total Uninstall 3 was released. It's an excellent app, especially for power users. I highly, highly recommend it.
Now, I've never actually used TU3 as an uninstaller per se. What I do is.. I run the app's uninstaller, and THEN run TU3. It gives you an idea of just how bad the standard uninstallers are. TU takes a snapshot of your files and registry, (wickedly fast!), before installation, and when you're done installing and start and close the app once, (that's how I do it), you make the second snapshot. All of this is done very quickly and by use of a very good GUI. You get a shell command for the context menu as well that lets you right-click any setup file and then "monitor with TU". That means you don't even have to start TU when you need to install anything.. just use the context menu and it will guide you through the process on its own. It really is great. Maybe I should start using it as an uninstaller. I just figured it's probably better to run the actual uninstaller itself and then use TU to remove any monitored leftovers :)

mouser:
i agree with your instinct - i'm not sure how TU3 does uninstalls, but it seems to me that every uninstaller should FIRST run the application's built in uninstaller, and then only do more when asked.

Carol Haynes:
TU3 works on the basis that it snapshots file locations and the whole registry before and after (actually it can be used for any app that runs on your system - you decide when to take the before and after snapshots). Using it to uninstall then undoes all the file and registry changes.

This only really works if you haven't installed something since that changes the same file locations (eg. file associations).

The other thing I have found is that if other apps are running at the same time they will also make some registry changes and so the uninstall routine could have unwanted consequences.

One useful thing is that you can edit the unistall data set - so you can make just the changes YOU want.

I don't personally think any of these uninstall monitoring packages should be used in any automatic way. They are a useful aid ...

Another really useful thing they do is to show you what changes are made for time limited trial software ..... I leave it up to the imagination what potential this may have ;)

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