Uninstallers - 2015 Edition

[Rolo]

Soft Organizer doesn't monitor the installer alone; that would be ineffective as all modifications are not done only by the installer itself. You're also supposed to run the program you installed and configure it before telling Soft Organizer to stop tracing. For example, the program may update or download/install additional components and write configuration files and this is the only way to catch that.

Yes, the downside of this is that it will log every change made by anything; however, one can filter these changes relatively easily and even mitigate them (don't multi-task whilst installing). To not log everything guarantees that your installation will not be completely captured and it would be difficult-to-impossible to deduce every change made by one specific package. Better too much information than not enough.

This also means that when you do uninstall with it, don't do so blindly--which isn't a good idea with any uninstaller, especially the scanning (guessing) ones.

Additionally, there was some software (security, don't remember which) I was testing on a VM and it created 50 thousand registry entries! (someone else pointed that out; I confirmed it w/Soft Organizer)

 

[roger_m]

@Rolo It's understandable why Soft Organizer works how it does, but I would prefer if it only monitored any processes launched when you install software, rather than monitoring the whole system. This is what is Comodo Programs Manager does. However, I no longer use CPM due it slowing down my computer.

 

[Ink]

Would you say the Pros of Monitoring Installations with an Uninstaller, outweigh the Cons (disadvantages)?

 

[roger_m]

@Huracan If you are prepared to check the monitored files and registry keys and deselect the ones not related the software you are uninstalling, then the pros outweight the cons.

 

[Ink]

@Huracan If you are prepared to check the monitored files and registry keys and deselect the ones not related the software you are uninstalling, then the pros outweight the cons.

Looked at a free solution, the monitoring service crashed during an installation, but continued to uninstall with it, but found nothing.

As a backup, I uninstalled with Geek Uninstaller, Everything and cleaned up with AdwCleaner and now scanning registry cleaning CCleaner and a manual term search.

 

[Rolo]

I used CPM for a while...rife with bugs and poor design and not exactly easy to use when you try to use it to uninstall. Abandonware.

The benefit of monitoring your installation is that you have a list (with an easy-to-use UI) of every bit installed/changed by the installation so you can completely undo the installation. If you don't do this, you don't have that ability. All it does is add a minute to the installation process. It has come in handy for me more often than I thought it would.

You don't have to pick and choose which traces to keep/disregard at any particular time; you only really need to examine it when you actually uninstall something. Soft Organizer (unlike CPM) also distinguishes between the program you're installing and any dependencies that installer may launch (i.e. JRT, .NET, VC Runtimes, etc.) and enter those as separate and independent installation traces.

If you don't do anything else during your install, you'll pretty much get just the install, your AV scan logs, and browser cache entries if the installer launches a web page (which I hate when they do that; I should block that behaviour).

 

[roger_m]

@Rolo I haven't found too many bugs it CPM, and I have zero complaints about the user interface, and if it was not for the system performance issues, I would still be using it as it works fine under Windows 8 and Windows 10.

I do realise that Soft Organizer is a useful program, but I grealty prefer the approach to monitoring installs done by CPM, because there is zero user input required.

 

[Vasudev]

Bulk Crap Uninstaller is very good one.

 

[Butterfly]

Honestly installation monitoring is really not worth the trouble in my opinion... In my experience Revo pro finds almost all (if not all, which is what mostly happens) of the leftovers every time, even the super hidden ones sometimes which really impresses me lol. Its just a hassle for me especially because i install and uninstall programs a lot and do things in the background when i install my programs.

 

[LabZero]

From experience I can say that it is always necessary to check the items deleted by the uninstaller: for example, if we have two programs of Ashampoo and I uninstall one, you must check that the uninstall routine does not have erased the other program elements, since, in this case, the name (ashampoo) is identical in the location.