A More Thorough Method to Uninstall Your Programs

IObit Advance Uninstall

So now that we’ve seen how the default uninstaller performs, let’s see how much leftover bits and pieces IOU can pick up. After reverting my virtual machine back to its default state, I installed FormatFactory again. I then captured a registry snapshot. Immediately, I opened IOU (which doesn’t require a install) and choose to uninstall FormatFactory under the Advanced mode (enabled by default). IOU proceeded to create a system restore point and then allowed me to uninstall FormatFactory first by using the default uninstaller, similar to the previous uninstall. After that, I activated the Powerful Scan feature. The scan picked up registry files left behind by the default uninstaller. After deleting them, I immediately took another registry snapshot and did a comparison. This time around, 694 keys and 1472 values were deleted.

Uninstalling Browser Toolbars

Another cool feature of IOU includes the ability to quickly uninstall third-party browser toolbars. Many a times during software installation, if you don’t pay attention and keep clicking the “Next” button, you’ll install a browser toolbar addon that you have no use for and one that you will have no idea how it got there in the first place. IOU includes a handy feature where it would do its best to list these types of toolbar addons on your system and allow you to remove them similar to how you can with other applications. These toolbars are actually very similar in that many do include their own uninstallers as well. Rather than hunt them down manually, IOU can help you in that regard. It’s not perfect but it’s a good starting point if your browser is cluttered with toolbars as seen below:

To uninstall these toolbars, you select them one by one within IOU. With Advance mode, you can also scan for leftover registry entries and files leftover by these toolbar’s default uninstaller app.

As you can see below, IOU picked up a lot of leftover pieces of files from many of the toolbars! However, IOU did let one browser toolbar escape its grasp so while you wouldn’t completely rely on it to detect all toolbars, it’s a good starting point.

In the End…

IObit Uninstaller can be a big help if you’re looking to try and scrub the many leftover registry and files from a default uninstall of a program. However, you just have to be aware of the risks of using a program such as this or any other that claims to do the same. In fact, one could argue that there really isn’t a need for such a utility. There are many users out there who have never heard, let alone use, of these utilities and their computers run just fine even after dozens and dozens of software installs and uninstalls. If you’re itching to see what traces are left behind by a specific application, then yes, by all means proceed to use this tool. Another benefit of using this utility is to help remedy botched uninstallation routines of a specific program. Sometimes a computer might return mysterious error messages after a uninstall of an application. In these cases, you can try to reinstall the program and then use IObit Uninstaller’s Powerful Scan feature to delete other files left behind by the default uninstaller.

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