Slashdot Mirror
Programs Cannot Be Uninstalled In Vista?
Corson writes "I am surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned this here yet. Possibly after one of the latest updates in Windows Vista, two strange things happened: first, the Uninstall option is no longer available in the Control Panel when you right-click on older programs (most likely, those installed prior to the update in question, because uninstall works fine for recently installed programs — the Uninstall button is also missing on the toolbar at the top); second, some programs are no longer shown on the applications list in Control Panel (e.g., Yahoo Messenger). A Google search returns quite a few hits on this issue (e.g., one, two, three, and four) but everybody seems to be waiting patiently for a sign from Microsoft. But the company seems to have no clue or they would have fixed it already. I am just curious how many of you are experiencing this nuisance."
Me thinks you need to call technical support instead of writing articles on Slashdot and your blog. Reason? I use Vista and I have an uninstall button for all the programs I have installed - and I've installed all the latest patches.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not annoying and I'm not suggesting it's acceptable, but for this to be on the front page of slashdot seems a bit over the top. Why?
- There is a known workaround (re-run the installation of the application you want to uninstall - the vast majority of the time you will be propted to select from adding features, repairing features or uninstalling the application)
- It's a pretty trivial bug which doesn't affect any critical systems or features
- It doesn't affect that many systems - I'm running 3 Vista x64 systems and none of them have this problem
This all seems a bit knee-jerk.One thing that really bothered me on OS X was its complete and total lack of an uninstall feature. This was especially annoying, as I'd hoped that the "drag to trash" was really a fancy GUI for some sort of real package manager.
I mean, sure, if your app is entirely self-contained, you can just drag it from Applications to Trash and be done with it -- at least that's no worse than Linux, where per-user preferences are left alone, but nobody really cares, since it's only a few K of disk space and doesn't affect anything else.
But what do you do about the random app that installs kernel extensions, browser extensions, and generally insinuates itself among all your stuff? You know, the cool stuff like Insomnia, the SMS-to-HID driver, or the force-any-window-to-fullscreen extension? Or even multi-desktops, or something as simple as a VPN?
Often, the uninstall instructions for these are at least as complicated and unnecessary as anything you hear people complaining about for installing software on Linux.
Oh wait, I forgot -- there's a proud Mac tradition of making you pay $20, $50, or $100 for random bits of third-party software to implement stuff that should have been in the OS to begin with. In the past, it was things like dynamic RAM allocation and swap space, and now, it's an uninstaller.
(You could complain that Windows is the same way, needing third-party stuff like anti-virus, but most of what you need on Windows is either bundled with the OS or available for free, often open source. And you don't really need anti-virus. On the Mac, it's always this truly basic functionality that I guess isn't needed by people who want it to "just work".)
In any case, mod me offtopic if you will, but maybe this proves that Apple was right not to include an uninstaller. Maybe most people just don't need to uninstall anything, ever, so it's too much work to include yet another feature that may confuse grandma, even if it makes us geeks grind our teeth at the mere thought...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
No problems here. I installed all of the available updates last night. I'm using Vista Ultimate 32-bit edition (on a 64-bit processor).
No worse than OS X, huh?
/Library/Receipts for the two and a half years I've been using OS X. You know that you can select 'File->Show Files' from an OS X installer packages to view all files contained within the package, right? Another feature I wish Windows had.
I recently went through my old PC to remove the unused software it has collected over the years. Not only was this a long and painful process involving questions about shared DLLs that no end-user is even remotely qualified to answer, but nearly half of the uninstallers failed out-right. On top of that, my PC was still littered with registry settings, program files, and cache files from applications that were supposedly uninstalled successfully.
Do you think the App-Zapper people will develop a version for Windows? I'd pay $20 for that!
The reality is that most Windows uninstallers do little more than what is accomplished from dragging an application bundle to the trash. The reason it works on OS X (and NEXTSTEP) is because the program files and system configuration settings are contained entirely within the application bundle, as opposed to being scattered throughout the file system and registry. That is why Windows needs an uninstaller.
The reason the situation is better on OS X is because OS X doesn't obfuscate the file system the way Windows does. For people who are paranoid about a clean computer it's relatively trivial to go into ~/Library/Caches, ~/Library/Application Support, and ~/Library/Preferences and clear out stuff. Average users do this, and it's this simplicity that allows programs like App-zapper to exist. Writing such a tool for Windows would be practically impossible.
Given the choice between Application/Framework Bundles vs. requiring an installer/uninstaller program for even the simplest application, I'll choose bundles every time. It's a valid point that OS X could include a catalog of legitimate uninstallers for applications that do provide them, but on the other hand, I've been getting along just fine with
But if that's all too much for Grandma then perhaps she should stick with Windows.
(By the way AppTrap does what App-Zapper does, and it's free and open source.)
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Actually this isn't just specific to Vista. This has happened several times in the past. Usually When and update to the installer or instalshied I forget what it's actual name is, has an incompatability with older versions and the install process removes registry entried so it no longer shows up in the add remeove programs dialog boxes.
I think I seen this happen on windows 98 and with ME when the installer stuff was updated. I'm suspecting that this is the same and it only effects people who used the older versions of the programs with the older installer that are seeing the effect. I was told once and I don't remember were, that the incompatabilities have to do with the uninstall.ini which is generated during the instal process. It either calls something that is no longer present or the formating of it no longer works corectly. If you have been around MS computers long enough, you will eventually see it. Sometimes it crops up as cannot find uninstall.ini or something simular with it in the corect folder and there when you check. It isn't a conspiracy, probably just an old problem creeping back.
A handy tool for sorting out Dell PC's can be found on this website. It even has a cool name. Sorted a colleague of mine's laptop real good.
First God made idiots. That was for practice. Then He made Jack Thompson.