Do you have programs you no longer use taking up space on your hard drive? Maybe you didn’t like a particular program and want it off your computer, or worse, it messed up your system. Well, here are some ways to get ’em out…
1. The first thing to do is click Start /Programs then hunt for the program you want to delete. Oftentimes, you’ll find an Uninstall program under it’s program group.
2. Another way would be to click the Start button/Settings/Control Panel . Then open the “Add/Remove programs” icon. You’ll see a list of programs that Windows can remove from your system. Just click the one you would like to remove and hit the OK button.
With XP go to Start/Control Panel then “Add or Remove Programs”—you can sort the list by name, size, frequency of use, or last date used. Highlight the program you want removed to get details about install date and use.
Go ahead and click the “Change/Remove” button to get rid of it.
3. If neither of the above works, you can always go to the program’s folder and delete it. However, there is no guarantee that the program was confined to that folder. It could have other files distributed throughout your computer.
4. Finally, you might consider a program like WinCleaner. It does a great job removing stubborn programs and unnecessary files.
As I mentioned earlier, you might get a message during uninstall telling you that there are shared files (.dll) that are not needed—it seems that whenever I delete these, it turns out I DO need them for another program to run, so it may be best to keep those files.
Keep in mind that some of the files that get placed on your hard drive when you install a program are basically updates to some of your existing files. So if you are uninstalling something and get a message saying not all the files from a program could be removed, it may be due to the fact that other programs also use these files.
Now you have more space on your hard drive and less clutter on your Programs list.
~ Steve