A Mad Journey: Comparing Windows uninstallers, getting upset and then deciding to make my own

I have been involved – and let’s be real here – often obsessed with many things about the Windows operating system. Back in the mystical 1990’s, I made a little free app called RegCleaner. Maybe you have used it, maybe you weren’t even born then.

In either case, this is a story about how I tend to go too far. And by “too far”, I don’t mean the having one too many pints with the lads on Saturday night kind of “too far”. I mean spending months of my life figuring out why some of those bits inside my computer are 1 when they should be 0.

I have always been interested in how things accumulate inside your computer. I don’t mean the piles of dust inside your computer (you should clean that later today, though), but I mean the leftover muck that gets stored inside your Windows operating system.

Imagine this: You install a new app or a game to your computer. But very soon after you realize you were bamboozled by some sleazy marketer typing those pretty words and you end up uninstalling the whole thing. That’s it, it’s gone, right? Well, no, not at all.

To keep it simple, Windows as an operating system is like a cat – it might be all pretty and even cute sometimes, but it doesn’t really care about you. Windows also doesn’t care what happens when you install something or when you remove it.

Basically, the app or game you are installing has almost free hands to do whatever it wants during the installation. It can create files almost anywhere, it can change almost anything and so on. Windows does not care.

While Microsoft has tried to push a more standardized way to install and uninstall things on Windows, called the Microsoft Store, it has been mostly a failure. If you have ever used Microsoft Store, you probably know why. If you haven’t used that, good for you. Let’s just say I’d rather go visit my dentist than open Microsoft Store. And if you think Microsoft Store is actually pretty good, you should leave right now.

That’s the backstory why we are here: under the hood, uninstalling apps from Windows is really complicated. For the user, it all looks very simple, but it’s very difficult. And that is why we have so many uninstallers.

Another reason why one would want to use an uninstaller program in Windows is the ability to uninstall many apps at the same time.

If you have bought a Windows laptop anytime during the last ten years, you know the amount of bloatware junk that comes with it. And if you are going to uninstall all of them using the normal Windows Apps & Features method, you will be spending a long time clicking all those “Are you sure?”, “Wait brother, wanna answer our survey on why you don’t like our bloatware?” dialogs.

I got myself a nice little VirtualBox virtual machine running an activated copy of Windows 10 Pro 22H2 with all the updates.

Then, I installed some common Windows apps to it. I had a headache after trying those uninstallers and I didn’t want to think too hard, so I just installed everything from the latest cancer (i.e. TikTok) to the old classics (e.g. Winamp).

I ended up installing: 7-Zip, AIMP, AllDup, Apple Mobile Device Support, Apple Software Updates, Audacity, Blender, Bonjour, Core Temp, Evernote, FastStone Image Viewer, FileZilla, Foxit PDF Reader, Internet Download Manager, IrfanView, iTunes, KMPlayer, KeePass 2, Mailbird, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Maintenance Service, Netflix, Spotify, TikTok, Winamp, Winrar and Winzip.

After I installed all those apps, I created a snapshot of the virtual machine state. That means, I could go back to the same state of the system and test each of the uninstallers in the exactly same environment.

I used each of the uninstallers to uninstall all those apps, and then I used an app called WinFindr to search for leftovers. WinFindr is a free app that allows you to search for files, folders, registry keys and registry entries, using multiple search terms at the same time. In other words, it’s perfect for the task. Also, I think it’s an amazing app. On an unrelenting note, I made it, so no wonder I like it.

Anyway, I used the names of the apps as search terms. Any data matching those app names after the apps were uninstalled, are considered as leftovers. Data that was most likely left behind by the uninstaller failing to remove all of the app’s data.

Before I started, I came up with some ground rules. They are:

I’m going to uninstall everything using the default uninstallation method,
If some uninstaller fails to automate something, I will click the default or recommended buttons. Because I don’t want to think about what to do.

Things escalated quickly: Building my own uninstaller
Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t just let this one go.

I tested all the popular Windows uninstallers and I didn’t like what I saw. I thought many of these programs had some rudimentary issues with their user interface, and they just didn’t work that well.

How difficult could it really be to do something better?

As it turned out, it was very difficult, actually.

Many things seem simple if you don’t know enough about them. Or, in other terms, when you are high on Mt. Stupid, you don’t even know what you don’t know.

On that note. While high on Mt. Stupid, I set myself up with some design goals.

The design goals for my uninstaller were:

Simple and user friendly. You should be able to choose what you see on your screen and adjust things freely, and easily.
Zero user interaction batch uninstall. After you click the final button to confirm you want to uninstall the selected apps, there should not be any kind of input required from you. As in none. Zero.
Accurate removal of leftovers. A software uninstaller that leaves thousands of items behind is a failure in my book. I don’t understand why anyone would use a program like that.
Lightweight. I don’t want anything extra. No bells and whistles. No marketing talk nonsense. A listing of software that one can uninstall, and a big Uninstall button.