Total Uninstall

Across Many, MANY Years, I have Thoroughly Tested About Eight Uninstallers. As a result of this HUGE NUMBER OF HOURS of Grueling Testing, I have actually discovered that it is quite a SIMPLE matter to make this SUMMARY Statement about Windows Uninstallers!! –––

• The Vast Majority of Uninstallers are "OKAY" — Most of them (with regard to removing EVERY File & Registry Value from the installation) do just slightly better than the Windows’ Native Uninstaller; Examples of "Just OK" Uninstallers include:: • CCleaner; • Wise; & • Puran. I STRONGLY Recommend against using these Mediocre Uninstallers because, over time, your computer (especially its Registry) becomes Cluttered with Erroneous Junk that DOES Bog Down your computer!

• Next UP is the Group of Uninstallers that are Actually "Good" about Locating & Removing Most of the Detritus that Lesser Uninstallers Leave Behind. Examples of "Good" Uninstallers include::
  • "Advanced Uninstaller Pro" {& Surprisingly, this Competent Uninstaller is FREE!};
  • "Uninstall Tool" (by CrystalIdea);  And
  • "IObit Uninstaller PRO" {The Free Version ranks only “OKAY”}!

• And Finally {& I Tested These TWO with Painstaking Thoroughness—spending a HUGE Amount of Time } –– These are the TWO Uninstallers that are Truly "OUTSTANDING" {Although, in my Opinion, One of them is Slightly BETTER– & I will tell you WHY—Below}. The Main Reason that BOTH •Revo & •Total Uninstall are Superior is because they are UNequaled at Hunting down & Removing the tiniest bit of leftovers from the install; Both of them include Excellent Help Files to answer all your questions; And Both of them allow the user to Select among varying degrees of Rigor in the Search for Remnants {TIP: Do NOT choose “Advanced Search”!! —Which Actually IS more Risky!} And Here’s a Key Difference Between •Revo & •Total Uninstall::  • If you Prefer “EASY”, you Will want to Choose Revo! Top-to-Bottom it is Designed to make a Thorough Uninstall a Piece of Cake for the User.

                             ————        ————

NOW TO CONCLUDE:: Here are the ReasonS that I Consider Total Uninstall (“T-O”) to be the World’s BEST Uninstaller:: A) Even when it UNinstalls an UNMonitored Install, T-O’s Search is SO Thorough, it is AS Complete as its Competitors’ MONITORED Installs! Simply Amazing!;

  B) And this Final UNIQUE T-O Feature makes it simply Awesome:: T-O includes a Module that WATCHES the type of detritus your computer generates in regular day-to-day (NON-Install) operation;  THEN, When it IS Monitoring an INSTALL, it will Totally EXCLUDE the day-to-day detritus from consideration during the INSTALLs—So that the Monitoring is Exceedingly Accurate––Simply Amazing!!   { However!! This Point #B also comes with a Negative:: You simply DO Need to Read the T-O MANUAL — But the Manual is NOT Lengthy. }

I'm revising my assessment of Total Uninstall. I cannot recommend this software in its current state, because it has a serious bug. Sometimes -- it happens perhaps 20% of the time for me -- when I compare snapshots, the TU process rapidly devours all available memory. Your page file will skyrocket in size, and if you don't kill tu.exe quickly enough, your system will crash. I have reported this bug several times, starting several years ago, but the issue remains. I've updated TU many times and reinstalled and upgraded Windows since then as well, so I don't want to hear any BS about this somehow being "my fault". This is a bug, and a very serious one. The TU author no longer responds to me.

I've been using Total Uninstall for 18 years as I write this (from early 2005 to late 2022). So you could say I have experience with it.

I'm not aware of any genuine alternatives to Total Uninstall: That is, utilities that actually create and compare before/after snapshots. Snapshotting is the only way to truly track and undo changes. The ONLY way. Maintaining a database of changes an application makes -- even if crowdsourced -- is not an alternative. Scanning the system is not an alternative. Period. This is not up for debate.

It's outstanding at what it does. It's indispensable to me, simply because -- for some maddening reason -- installation and uninstallation standards have remained lax on Windows over the decades. Software very often leaves behind not just space-wasting garbage in static directories, but problem-causing drivers and services that can become very serious issues later on. Microsoft very obviously cares more about raping user privacy and refining the clown suit than it does fixing these (completely fixable) issues that actually matter.

The problem is that it's extremely difficult for a utility like Total Uninstall to be safe for novice users. You can mess up your system badly using Total Uninstall, and that's not really Total Uninstall's fault. It's because Windows is incredibly complex and is always busily creating and changing files and registry entries all over the place.

It is entirely possible, for example, that during the time between the creation of your Total Uninstall pre-installation and post-installation snapshots, Windows decides to update Microsoft Store applications, Windows Defender, or some random Windows updates. If you later blindly undo every change that occurred during "install", you are very highly likely to cause issues, because you will also be removing and/or breaking items intrinsic to Windows.

You can mitigate this in part by adding exclusions to Total Uninstall, but this is far from easy to do, because -- again -- Windows is incredibly complex.

Total Uninstall is great, but be sure to use System Restore, be sure to create image backups, and be (more or less) sure you know what you're doing.