Uninstalling Programs
Sometimes it becomes necessary to remove programs from your computer. It is very important that these programs be removed correctly, because doing so incorrectly can cause your computer to become unusable. If a program is written correctly, it will provide a way to uninstall itself.
UNINSTALL FROM THE START MENU
If you go to Start>Programs and look for the name of the program you want to uninstall, you may see an option to Remove or Uninstall the program. Select that item in the Programs menu, and the Uninstall routine will run. Just follow the instructions that come up.
ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS
To uninstall a program using Add/Remove Programs, you will need to access the Control Panel. Click Start>Control Panel.
Your Control Panel will show up in one of two formats. You have the choice of how the Control Panel is displayed, depending on your personal preference. The views can be changed by clicking the option in the upper left corner of the window.
 Category View |
 Classic View |
In either view, look for Add/Remove Programs and click it. The list of installed programs will be built.
When the list displays, locate the program that you want to remove. Click Remove for that program.
Windows will ask if you are sure. Click Yes.
The Uninstall software will run, removing the program from your computer.
There are different ways that you will know if the process is complete. There may be a dialog box stating that the program is uninstalled, or the programs list may come back, and the program you wanted to remove is no longer listed.
NOTE: There may be messages stating that files to be removed may be used by other programs, and you will have the option to keep them. I usually tell it to uninstall those files, and I have never had a problem.
You may also get a message stating that some files could not be removed. These are usually data files. When the uninstall is complete, you can navigate to the original folder where the program was installed, and delete that folder, if you will no longer need that data.