Safely Remove Programs Back to the previous page
January 25th, 2002
* Please be assured that I will never sell or share your
email addresses with anyone else! I respect your privacy!*
Hi again!!
You guys are really getting your money's worth this month!
Here's some interesting things to check out:
Try this new search engine:
http://www.lukol.com/ . Click on the colored hyperlink (http://...)
and you will go to this search engine. If your email program doesn't support
hyperlinks, as AOL users experience often, type it in your address bar in your
browser program (Internet Explorer, Netscape, AOL, etc.). You may also copy and
paste it by highlighting and right-clicking on the http address above, click on
copy, and go to the address bar, and
right-click again with the cursor in the bar, and click paste. It's a very good
search engine program, and searches many other major search engines at the same
time for you when you type in a keyword. I like it, and I thought I'd just pass
it on to you. :)
I have had many inquiries on "How to safely delete programs and files". So let
me line you out on this procedure, so that you don't delete some files or
programs that you will regret later. Deleting the wrong thing can cause
your computer not to function, and that's not a good thought; but sometimes it
is necessary to delete programs from your computer for many reasons. Some
of those reasons:
1. A program is not working correctly, and may need to be installed again; it's
always best to uninstall a program and cleanly reinstall to get the best
performance.
2. You need more space on your hard drive, and you need to uninstall programs
that you don't use any more.
These are a couple of reasons to bravely remove programs or files. The
first thing to understand is that some programs come with their own
uninstallation program. This is the cleanest removal you can use, but not all
programs have this. Follow these steps for the best solution to removing
programs SAFELY:
1. Go to the control panel: Click on Start|settings|control panel| and find
ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS in there, and double-click on it to open.
2. Find your program (and sometimes it's not in there) that you are trying
to remove or uninstall, and highlight it by clicking one time on it. This tells
the operating system what program you are choosing to remove. Now,
click add/remove, and follow the wizard, which is made up of boxes that
are coming up and asking you questions. Basically, you will click NEXT a
couple of times, and then you may come to a box that asks you if you
want to keep the SHARED FILES.
3. It's just a good idea to KEEP THE SHARED FILES. The reason you keep the
shared files is because they are linked many times to your operating system
files. Deleting them has a tendency to delete your operating system files, as
well. Not a good thing! It doesn't always, but 6 times out of ten
(in my opinion), you are likely to delete a few operating system files along
with the program files. Those odds should make you realize that it is very
important to keep the shared files, and they don't take up a lot of space
anyway.
You see, Microsoft designed their operating system, Windows, to integrate (share
files) with the program as a key factor in programs functioning compatibly with
the operating system. They thought this was a good idea, and many programmers
wrote their programs to do just this with great success, and programs worked
well. This was an idea with Windows 3.1, and it has prevailed through many of
the Windows programs, since; I don't know if that's absolutely the case with all
the operating systems (especially XP), but if you get the message about shared
files during a removal of a program, I'd say that you have an operating system
that has that feature.
This was one of those aspects of Microsoft, that made their operating system
even more indispensable to consumers and programmers. Pretty smart fellers',
weren't they?!
4. Often times, you must restart your computer as a last step to the removal of
a program. So be sure that you do, and when you reboot (restart) your computer,
you will see some messages that mention "changes are taking place". This is
normal, and it's the way windows sheds a program, and regroups after it
restarts.
Now, what do you do if your program isn't in the add/remove box? This is
the part that gets a little tricky, but basically you have to take it out in the
Windows Explorer. Check first in the programs to see if your program has an
uninstall feature. You can do this by clicking on Start|Programs| locate your
program, and see if there are many components visible in this program by
clicking on the triangle at the end of the program name. You see this if there
are elements to click on other than the Action (.EXE) file that starts the
program. If you don't find one, you will need to proceed to the Windows
Explorer. This is not as ideal for removing programs, because it takes out
the
shared files, if there are any, and it's not as clean for your operating
system. Sometimes, it's just necessary, though, usually this is okay.
1. Put your mouse cursor on the start button, and right-click, and then click
on EXPLORE in the menu that pops up. This will take you to the Explorer.
2. Find your C: drive on the left column, click on the + sign, and your
programs will unfold. If your program is located in the program files, you need
to click on the + sign to view the programs, or double click on the program
files directory to open the programs to the right in the larger area.
3. You will need to right-click on the program that you are trying to
uninstall,
and click delete. This will take out almost all elements of the program, but
you might have to manually delete some shortcuts to the program that may
be on your desktop, or the program files menu. Just right-click on these,
and also click on delete. REMEMBER, deleting a shortcut to a program does
not delete the program, so you will have to do one or the other of these
methods to delete a program. The way you tell a shortcut from a program icon is
the little curved arrow pointing up in the left corner of the icon.
4. And finally, using either method, you will need to go to the desktop,
find the icon that is your recycle bin, right-click on the recycle bin icon, and
click on "empty recycle bin". I also urge you to scandisk and defrag your
hard drive after removing programs. This will maximize the space you have
created, and it will put all your files for each program where they belong.
Your computer will be happier, and so will you.
Be sure you don't just randomly delete files off your hard drive (C:). Some
people email and ask "do they really need the .dll files, they need space and
they'd just like to delete those". This is bad news! Don't do this! You will
be crippling your operating system or another program because you have
deleted one of the files it needs to operate properly.
I hope this newsletter helps, and doesn't seem to be a complicated one, as
well. I do feel like I've given you all enough to think about for a while,
so in closing let me just end with a few comments on Windows XP, and
Internet Explorer 6.0 and Outlook Express 6.0:
I'm still not impressed with Windows XP. It is grossly incompatible with
many standby programs that home users have used, and really like to use. For a
new computer user, I don't see that it is an easier experience, as they claim.
And for the more experienced user, I think it has muddled many of the features
of windows that needed to be left alone. I'm not one that is resistant to
change when it comes to these things, but progress is progress, and this is not,
in my opinion. I will let you know if I think it is becoming a more user
friendly operating system as time goes on, but as it stands, it is incompatible
with many programs, and the program manufacturers aren't trying too hard to
change their software to fix this. Not a lot of patches and updates are being
offered to support older programs, and I'm talking about just one year old
programs. That's not good!
On Internet Explorer/ Outlook Express 6.0, still got too many bugs for me.
I just tried to put in a new address on a client's brand new computer, and it
completely froze up twice before we could get it done. Of course, this brand
new Sony computer also had Windows XP on it, too. Wonder which one or both was
the culprit? Hmmmmmmm...
That's quite enough, and I think that you will agree, that we are caught up!
Talk to you next month, which will be here before I know it, and we'll chat
some more.
Hope you enjoyed this newsletter. I'm trying to help, and if you have any
subject that you would like me to address, please email me @:
rocky1@rockyreport.com
I appreciate all of you. Remember that I will have all these monthly issues of
my newsletter available at my websites, along with other information:
http://www.rockyreport.com
And
http://www.internetguideandmore.com
Thanks for reading!
If you know of anyone who would like to receive this newsletter, tell them to
send a blank email to:
subscribe@rockyreport.com
If you would like to unsubscribe for any reason, be sure you send me the email
address that you subscribed under, or I won't be successful in removing your
name from the list. Just send a blank email to:
unsubscribe@rockyreport.com
TELL A FRIEND! THANKS!
Back to the
previous page
Back to the top