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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."
Problems like this happen all the time. This is why companies usually have a vetting process for any updates that are released and why no person should download an update for a week or more for these issues to be brought up and found/fixed. I keep automatic updates turned off ever since an update for Win2k corrupted my installation and forced a full re-install.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I used my uninstall button with Windows a long time ago. No problems since then.
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.
'All your base belong to us' No uninstall needed!
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
It works both ways though -- some number of users experience a problem and they think that *everyone* must be having the problem. Other users aren't having the problem and don't understand how *anyone* could be having trouble. Despite what some may think, assholes are a two-way street :)
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!
When I was younger my best tactic for fixing a computer issue was to format. As I got older I realized that solution is impractical. Just like switching to another OS is impractical for most of us.
So on that train of thought switching from XP to Vista is considered impractical, you'll get no argument from me on that one.
An update in Vista breaking something rather major (the ability to uninstall shit), qualifies as both news (hasn't happened to any other version of Windows that I recall), and something that matters (plenty of people are using Vista, even if it's only because it came with their computer, so this is potentially affecting quite a few people). It quite firmly belongs on slashdot, thanks.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Translation: a grand total of 5 users say they are experiencing this problem, probably including the author of this story.
After reading the posts linked in the article it seems the problem might be related to Yahoo toolbar crapware being installed on the PCs. You can use use system restore to fix the problem. Stop clicking "accept" when UAC warns you not to install crapware. Stop posting Vista FUD stories to Slashdot. Thank you.
The tone of TFS does. "Programs cannot Be Uninstalled In Vista?" Nice device -- just use the question mark on a smear to disclaim it if it is later found false. I think it's called the "Cavuto mark", after the guy on Fox News.
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).
To add to that, there's often articles about Firefox vulnerabilities on Slashdot, and many posts saying 'everything works fine here' regularly modded up to +5.
In this case, the very first post saying 'mine is OK' is modded as Redundant.
Would your "vetting" process have spotted this...?
I can see how a "vetting process" would spot major problems with a patch but would you honestly have spotted "uninstall button missing for some applications"?
To me it seems like the sort of thing people only notice weeks or months after an update.
No sig today...
Microsoft has claimed the problem is less than 5% of all units.
Maybe the big image problem MicroSoft is having as far as bugs and quality control is a matter of people expecting more from computers as they get ever more integrated in our lives. If 5% of a new model of HD-DVD player wouldn't eject the DVD, there would be a recall. When PCs were novelties it was OK for them to be "quirky". That time has passed. MicroSoft, and much of the software world in general, need to step up and produce goods with real craftsmanship, not patched together. Yes I know modern software is all terribly complex, but if it's too hard to do well, go into a different line of work.
We are all just people.
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!
Because he speaks a bit of truth. If you have supported Vista on the corporate side of things, it is a bit of the spawn of the devil in some regards. Most legacy VPN programs are hosed and countless other products had to go through a whole series of revamping and patching (heck even Outlook Web Access controls are broke on systems using Vista if you don't patch)
Of course most corporate users wouldn't notice thing since most companies are staying away from Vista like the plague but on occasion when a user calls in saying they got a new persona computer from dell and need to VPN or use OLWA or a legacy app... Well...
Office 2007 on the other hand is great, but you can run that on WinXP. No need to upgrade.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Perhaps you ought to give GNU/Linux systems another try. Perhaps Ubuntu would be your forté, simply because the "esoteric command line stuff," as you put it, isn't really required. There may be some situations wherein a little bit of command line stuff might be required, but these situations are typically more rare than you would think, at least in my experience. It just seems that people that run into these situations are quite loud and rampant with it.
There are many systems that are more tailored for geeks, and then you have Ubuntu and some other systems that are really tailored to end-users. Overall, they're doing a great job with it, and it is getting to be better as time goes on.
Having run both Windows Vista (both the 32-bit and the 64-bit, beta and release versions), I must say that there really is no comparison to Ubuntu. Windows still has many problems that it hasn't really gotten over yet, mostly due to problems that still haunt them from the past, but also because when you install a retail version of Vista, the drivers that you need have to be sought and everything else. Contrasted with Ubuntu, which has drivers for everything on all of the PCs that I manage on my own personal network, and on other systems that I have installed it onto (which at this point exceeds 100). Other distributions of GNU/Linux are more lightweight, but you don't really need to be <em>that</em> lightweight on today's PCs, either: Windows Vista seems to require way more resources than an updated and heavily customized Ubuntu Feisty box running an up-to-date version of Compiz and Emerald.
Here's an experiment for you to run on your own, if you are able to do so: Take a relatively modern PC and a Windows Vista Retail disc and an Ubuntu Feisty disc. Have someone install both of them. To be fair, make sure that it is a computer that has hardware that is supported under both operating systems by either a third party driver or the operating system itself. See which one is easier (and takes less time and black magic) to get working. I'm willing to bet that the outcome will surprise you. I know for sure that the outcome will surprise you on the machine that I have as my primary workstation (a HP Pavilion Slimline s7700n PC). Ubuntu supports the hardware in this system even better than Vista does pre-installed, and runs quite a bit faster (one such example: <em>Guild Wars</em> runs like utter crud on this system under Vista, but runs perfectly under Cedega on Ubuntu. Windows XP runs it better than Vista on this PC, but not as well as I can run it under Ubuntu.
It might be pertinent to do some fact-checking before spouting off next time... but then again, this <em>is</em> Slashdot.
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.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The problem with software is the license crap. The part that makes it impossible to return it as defect, even if it contains thousands of critical bugs. We need more consumer protection there. Just like any other items, if it has more than a low number of non-critical problems, one should be able to return any software for a full refund.
Pass that as a law, include that no license, EULA or any other agreement can void that right, and within record time, software quality would go up.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
as far as i'm concerned, if i'd just spent 200 dollars on the newest and best product from the largest and richest software company in the world i'd expect the thing to fucking well just work and work now.
I recently bought a Dell laptop with tons of crap software installed. None of them had the Uninstall button
I solved the problem by replacing that Vista with a clean installed one.
It still puzzles me how they (Dell) did it, but haven't had the time to check it myself.
gtkaml.org
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.