Monday, April 02, 2007

Software Leftovers

Don't you just hate it when, after you've uninstalled a game or application from your Windows PC, you get all kinds of leftovers? It usually is the installation directory, empty. It may also be a registry key, no longer necessary. And the question is why.

Why do these people write so lousy uninstallation routines that leave annoying garbage behind? One would think I am talking about some third-class piece of software but no. I am talking about very popular games and applications by well-known, well-respected companies.

Maybe it's the whole "Windows Attitude" to spread files here and there, register a couple of components and forget half of them behind in the end. Maybe they just think nobody will ever want to remove their program (cause it's "so cool").

Being a programmer myself, I find it really irritating when others fail to do their job. Over time you will get a PC which will be slower due to a large number of redundant file system and registry entries that still have to be parsed by the OS. And of course there is the aesthetic part which calls for a nice "clean" system.

I want to look at my hard disk and find my currently installed software and files and NOT a history of my activities over the last two years. Is that too much to ask?

2 comments:

Weird AL said...

Well, Installing and Uninstalling stuff is in fact a matter of Windows!
"Windows Installer" does very shitty things, as it cannot delete registry sh*t. It is some kind of "convinience" for future installs.
Visual studio has this feature, also capable of building theese annoying *.msi files (which are not executed by WINE in Linux)

BULLSHIT!

There are thousands of setup builders, like the one I use, that when you uninstall, it uninstalls EVERYTHING, and the files that cant't remove, you get a notification...

Is it so hard to clean everything? I mean arent they annoyed when garbage left in their own computers?

Damn stupidity!

George 2K8 said...

As far as I know, Microsoft has issued a directive to software vendors, back from the time of Windows 98, NOT to use the registry. In Vista it simply denies access.