Serious Discussion Uninstalr: Or how I tested all the Windows uninstallers and ended up making a new one

roger_m

Level 42
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Dec 4, 2014
3,184
Some suggestions. To allow the uninstallation of the currently selected app, without having to check the checkbox next to it, for when you want to uninstall a single app. To only ask to close all apps and reboot when it is specifically needed. For example, if prompt to close all open apps, if a file or folder can't be deleted.
 

HarborFront

Level 72
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Oct 9, 2016
6,158
That is a matter of opinion. I think it looks okay, but not great. Its latest official version doesn't even support Windows dark mode, and it fails if you try to search with too many search terms at the same time. But if you like the way it looks and works, you should use that. I use it all the time, too. I think it's great in finding that one file you know is somewhere but don't remember exactly where. For finding a lot of data, I don't think it's the ideal solution. That is one reason why I made WinFindr in the first place.

Is this not dark theme for Everything?

1690549666880.png
 

jv16

From Macecraft Software
Thread author
Verified
Developer
Jan 2, 2023
91
Is this not dark theme for Everything?

View attachment 277468

Not really. A dark mode means that the entire user interface is in dark mode, not just one element's white background have been changed to black.

Everything does have dark mode, but as far as I know, it's still only available in their 1.5 version, which has been in development and not yet officially released since 2021 (Dark Mode - voidtools forum)

To be clear, my intent is not to say anything bad about Everything. I think it's a great tool and especially when it came out, it was a game changer for file searching in Windows. I use it literally every day myself.
 

jv16

From Macecraft Software
Thread author
Verified
Developer
Jan 2, 2023
91
Some suggestions. To allow the uninstallation of the currently selected app, without having to check the checkbox next to it, for when you want to uninstall a single app. To only ask to close all apps and reboot when it is specifically needed. For example, if prompt to close all open apps, if a file or folder can't be deleted.

I agree that it would make sense to allow uninstallation of the currently selected app without having to check the checkbox next to it. I think the logical way to do this is to add Uninstall option to the Right Click menu, and if no items are checked, then the currently selected item is the one that is being uninstalled.

I'm a simple engineer. I like simple solutions. Trying to automagically detect whether closing any apps or reboot is required would add too much complexity to the system, and just introduce cases when the app might be unable to remove something. I prefer the current method: user can choose to not do the app killing or reboot, but if they choose that, there is a warning text on screen saying that the uninstallation quality might suffer from that.

Thank you for your feedback!
 

Mops21

Level 36
Verified
Honorary Member
Content Creator
Oct 25, 2014
2,503
That's unfortunate. I don't know what's wrong with Bitdefender but I hope they will fix it soon. This is what they said about it before our release. We tested it with the Bitdefender Windows client AND using VirusTotal before releasing the app:

View attachment 277478

View attachment 277477
Hi @jv16

Thank you very much for this and I have some more questions for you

1. What are your plans for the Uninstaller

2. Will you release a paid Version too

3. Will you release other products when yes which products an what can you say about that

Mops21
 

Sorrento

Level 13
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Dec 7, 2021
624
Out of interest as my other half was out last night, YES! I tried uninstalling most things on my PC including F-Secure & Armor, among others - So far no issues, Win 11 Pro - If anything occurs in the future I'll say - So far it's a cracking free program :eek: (I imaged back afterwards)
:eek:
 

mlnevese

Level 28
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
May 3, 2015
1,760
I believe the problem may come from either security software, people uninstalling PowerShell or hardening Windows to a point it's blocking the software without prompts. I tested it in two different laptops without any hardening and had no trouble. Clean uninstall every try.
 

JohnR

Level 2
Feb 19, 2020
75
Am using only Win Defender on a week old media creation tool clean install, PowerShell etc untouched.

Only additional sw running, is AMD Adrenaline and Adguard desktop.

Edit;
Just tried to uninstall CrystalDiskinfo and had another blue screen, will re-install Win 11 later today and see if the issue re-occurs.
 
Last edited:

upnorth

Level 68
Verified
Top Poster
Malware Hunter
Well-known
Jul 27, 2015
5,458
I believe the problem may come from either security software, people uninstalling PowerShell or hardening Windows to a point it's blocking the software without prompts. I tested it in two different laptops without any hardening and had no trouble. Clean uninstall every try.
Small test ( not conclusive! ) and it seems to work as intended, but since it's a early/fresh release I'm sure it needs to be tweaked. The Darkmode for example I had issues with ( both in a VM with Windows 10 Pro 64bit and on AnyRun with Windows 7 32bit ):

2023-07-29_14-20-35.png


@jv16
Uninstalr go brrrr
You Got Me Lol GIF by BrownSugarApp
 

mlnevese

Level 28
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
May 3, 2015
1,760
Small test ( not conclusive! ) and it seems to work as intended, but since it's a early/fresh release I'm sure it needs to be tweaked. The Darkmode for example I had issues with ( both in a VM with Windows 10 Pro 64bit and on AnyRun with Windows 7 32bit ):

View attachment 277491

@jv16

You Got Me Lol GIF by BrownSugarApp
That' a TRUE dark mode :)

giphy.gif
 

Trident

Level 34
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Feb 7, 2023
2,349
You can never really remove all traces from a Windows machine.
Mac is not any better, it’s just that it has no registry but it has plenty of directories and rubbish after uninstall remains everywhere. It’s just how uninstall process is. That’s why it’s not recommended to install/uninstall software frequently. Specially one that is not needed.
 

Sandbox Breaker

Level 11
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Jan 6, 2022
530
Mac is not any better, it’s just that it has no registry but it has plenty of directories and rubbish after uninstall remains everywhere. It’s just how uninstall process is. That’s why it’s not recommended to install/uninstall software frequently. Specially one that is not needed.
Chrome OS seems to be really clean.
 

jv16

From Macecraft Software
Thread author
Verified
Developer
Jan 2, 2023
91
@jv16
Uninstalr now working as expected following a clean W11 install, I can only assume pilot error on my part and possibility that something I removed by over zealous use of Hibit on my previous install was preventing Uninstalr from running correctly and cause of the blue screen.

Thank you for reporting! Nevertheless, I'm firing up my virtual machines and trying to find a way to reproduce the Win11 BSOD issue, so I can fix it. Even though it's rare, I want to fix it.
 

jv16

From Macecraft Software
Thread author
Verified
Developer
Jan 2, 2023
91
Hi @jv16

Thank you very much for this and I have some more questions for you

1. What are your plans for the Uninstaller

2. Will you release a paid Version too

3. Will you release other products when yes which products an what can you say about that

Mops21

Right now, my plans are to make Uninstalr as good as I possibly can. For the short term, it means fixing two reported bugs:

1) On some Windows 11 systems, uninstalling something can cause the system to show BSOD error message.
2) On some systems with a lot of installed software, the initial Uninstalr scan fails with Out Of Memory error message and the app doesn't run. This seems to be relating to the number of installed apps. For example, one user reporting this, said he has over 500 apps installed.

Neither of these bugs are serious in the sense that there is no data loss or damage to the system, but I want to fix these ASAP anyway.

It's now Sunday and I'm trying to reproduce these issues right now. I already tried on Friday, but I couldn't, so I'm trying again, until I can reproduce them.

There might be a paid Pro version coming in the future but I'm not sure, yet, to be honest. And if there ever is such thing coming, it will contain additional features, no features of current Uninstalr are going to be locked away or removed. In other words, I want to continue to develop a free and very accurate app uninstaller for Windows.

The main reason for this is that quite a few users have already asked how they can support the development and they wanted to donate money.

Unfortunately, my company is registered in Finland and although I no longer live there, the local law still makes things difficult for me. In this case, the law makes it quite impossible for a company to accept donations. In short, one needs a government permit to ask or accept donations, and to get the permit, you would need to be an organization or a foundation, not a limited liability company. So if I would do a paid Pro version with a few dollar for life license, that would basically just allow people to support the development but without calling it a donation, because I cannot legally ask for donations. And if one would pay for that, they could get some additional features. Something like that, perhaps in the future. Not now.

In regards of other products, I have some plans for new products in the near future. Namely, me and my friend David have been working on Free Daily Check-In Service For Seniors - I’m Still Okay which is a daily check-in service for people living alone, especially senior citizens. I would like to make a Windows app client for that system and some feature improvements to the website in general (e.g. allow users to choose their check-in time).

I have also been thinking about making an alternative to Ninite, allowing users simply choose apps from a list and then those apps are installed to your computer without any user interaction required. Since Uninstalr can already uninstall things without any user interaction required, I think it might make sense to also have a way to do the opposite, that is, to also allow people to install software easily. I think Ninite is great, but its selection of software that one can install with it, is very limited to say the least. Right now, this is just a thought, and I don't have any actual plans to do this, but I might.

Not technically a new product, but I will be releasing an update to WinFindr soon, with some additional features such as the ability to search inside compressed files such as zip and rar files, as well as the most requested feature of being able to search inside document files. For example, to find which DOCX or ODT or PDF file contains a specific text. After I add these features, it would further distinguish WinFindr to be different from Voidtools Everything. I don't see myself as competing against Everything, because I love that app. I see myself making an app that you can use along side with Everything, for some different use cases.
 

jv16

From Macecraft Software
Thread author
Verified
Developer
Jan 2, 2023
91
It would appear I spoke too soon, Win 11 now crashing againg with same blue screen, crash occurs at point of selecting 'Yes'..
View attachment 277503

I have been unable to reproduce the problem in any testing systems that I have.

So, I'm afraid I need to ask whether you could do a small favor for me: Could you try this one more time, but this time, please uncheck the "Automatically close all running programs" option before the uninstallation starts.

I currently have a few gut feeling guesses what could be going wrong with the uninstallation, and my best guess is that when Uninstalr closes all running programs, it accidentally also closes a critical Windows background process and that causes the issue.

If you could try this with the "Automatically close all running programs" option unchecked, we could check whether that guess should be investigated further.
 

About us

  • MalwareTips is a community-driven platform providing the latest information and resources on malware and cyber threats. Our team of experienced professionals and passionate volunteers work to keep the internet safe and secure. We provide accurate, up-to-date information and strive to build a strong and supportive community dedicated to cybersecurity.

User Menu

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to know first about the latest cybersecurity incidents and malware threats.

Top