System Restore - but uninstall the undesired program first?

[Bill in Co.]

Yes, this may not always be true. But it is *almost always* true.

I know. (You're preachin to the choir.

That said, however, I've likely witnessed a few more cases than most have
where it hasn't been true. But then again, I've been messin with all this
stuff since Day1, although I am somewhat new to XP (Win98SE was my primary
mainstay, well, and Win95, and Win3.1, and DOS, and some programming.

So, since the overwhelming majority of the time, there is no consequence
to
leaving a few leftover registry entries after an uninstall, I wouldn't
worry about running System Restore every time following (or in place of)
an uninstall.

In the rare instance there is a problem, then I would be comfortable
running either regedit or Jouni Vuorio's RegCleaner 4.3 (for the purpose
of searching for entries specifically related to the errant program).

Yeah, I know, am familiar with it, and several others, and even Registry
Workshop, where you'd need to know exactly what you are doing.

Yes, I mentioned a "registry cleaner!" But this one does not do the
typical automatic search and destroy that most "cleaners" do (unless you
tweak it, and this is something I would never recommend, anyway); rather
there are two columns -- Author and Software. And whenever an entry is
right-clicked, the location of the registry keys is revealed. You don't
even need to remove the keys via RegCleaner. If you're paranoid, you can
always just note the location and use regedit to do the deed. That being
said, I would never recommend messing with the registry to *any* newbie.

Me either. But again, I'm no newbie at it, either.

I think a prudent guideline is (for example), if you don't even know your
way around regedit, you shouldn't be trying out ANY reg cleaner programs -
period. And even if you do know your away around using regedit (manually
editing the registry), you probably know enough to limit your experiments
there. And so, "a word to the wise is sufficient".

But for those interested, there are plenty of materials on the Web one
can read to learn about the registry. And ERUNT is an excellent tool for
backing up the registry -- just in case. So, if System Restore doesn't
yield the desired result, there's always ERUNT. (Or imaging the hard
drive regularly can do the trick, too.)

Done all of that, too.

 

[Bert Kinney]

Yes, and that is generally the case. (however, there have been a few
exceptions)


If the program is large enough, it might. I've already run into one case
where I did install and then uninstall a program, and then tried using
System Restore to fully get it back to a clean system - and System Restore
balked. (System Restore came back and said it couldn't do the
restoration).

Of course, if I had NOT uninstalled it first and just tried running System
Restore, who knows what the result would have been. (My guess is it might
have been more successful and not balked; that is, it would have
successfully run to completion).

Still, I'd prefer to uninstall the program myself (as you would expect), and
not rely on System Restore to (in effect) do that for me (leaving behind
most of its program files in the process) but removing all registry
references to it.

BTW, that program was a trial edition of an older version of Adobe Audition,
which is a fairly large program.

I have this process to work very well.

1. Create a new restore point.
2. Install the application to test and play around with.
3. If in a couple of days you want to remove the application, uninstall it
via add/remove programs then restore the system to just before the
application was installed. This will remove as much of the application as
possible without manually removing files and registry entries it created.
Just keep in mind that any monitored changes made in that period will be
undone also.

Can I use System Restore to reinstall deleted or uninstalled applications?
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#5


Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.net

 

[Bill in Co.]

I have this process to work very well.

1. Create a new restore point.
2. Install the application to test and play around with.
3. If in a couple of days you want to remove the application, uninstall it
via add/remove programs, then restore the system to just before the
application was installed. This will remove as much of the application as
possible without manually removing files and registry entries it created.
Just keep in mind that any monitored changes made in that period will be
undone also.

Well, that's what I've been doing, Bert. But as I said, *after* I
uninstalled it, I ran System Restore to the previous setpoint (to really be
clean), and System Restore failed - no doubt because it was such a large
program.

Still, I agree and think this is the best way to do it.

To recap:
1) Create a restore point before installing the program.
2) Install the program. Try it out.
3) If you don't like it, uninstall it.
4) Then (optionally) run System Restore to rollback to the previous
setpoint, to clean up any leftovers. And *usually* that works quite well
(but it didn't work in this case)

But I was just wondering about the possibility of 1) installing the program
and then 2) running System Restore to rollback to the previous setpoint,
without explicitly "uninstalling it", that's all. I know the program's
Program Files (etc) would be left over, and all that, but *effectively* the
program would be uninstalled anyway.

And here is the key point - System Restore would have less changes to keep
track of that way (all it needs to have recorded are the changes during the
install), so it actually might be able to run to completion (for such a
large program)

Still, all things considered, I like the previous way better - i.e., using
the uninstaller. And if System Restore fails and can't clean up the
leftovers, C'est La Vie.