PC utilities forum: Removing old trial programs

I've yet to find "free" except will share that JV16's tool helps in the Registry department. Read http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6138-0.html?forumID=31&threadID=21908&start=0

Files are fairly easy to spot. I just delete the shortcuts and the matching Program Files directory that held the former program...

There's not much else to do.

Bob

Let's propose that an application cleaner should remove the users files created with the app?

Not a good idea and why no tool I've seen does such.

Bob

When ever you install any program it inserts files into the system registry, sure you can delete programs by using their uninstall file or by going to add/remove programs. But this will not get rid of those sys reg files. you need a program like Registry Mechanic or RegSupreme to delete these files. Then you will have rmoved ALL or the traces of the program.

Here is a list of registry utilities available on CNET
http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=registry+utility&tg=dl-2001&search.x=17&search.y=12

HI, I've used a number of free uninstallers and the best one to date is Easy Uninstaller. Here is the URL

http://www.deepeshagarwal.tk/

The good thing about it is you don't have to take snapshots before and after you install software (a real pain and not very practical if you test alot of software like I do). Easy Uninstaller works immediately and seems to remove most pieces of trialware (or any software). It does not catch everything, everytime! I've yet to find one that does. It also includes a backup manager for those, just in case scenarios where a critical file is deleted.

Hope this works out for you.

Frank

When I remove old or unwanted programs I always follow up with a regedit to make sure all is removed. To do this click on your start button and go to run, type in regedit and then hit enter. When the window opens click on Edit > Find, type in the name of the program and then click on find, as it searches through the registy it will stop at anything to do with the program then you hit the delete key and then ok to confirm then press F3 to find next. Do this till all instances are found and removed. Be careful however not to delete any other keys as this action could result in the need to reinstall some programs.
Chaddy

sure,there are several registry utilities available which remove registry entries at the time of uninstal. but what about removal of several other files -mostly hidden or sys/ini/dll etc left behind uncleared in various directories? these become junk after removal of original programme. these are not detected/removed by any utilities atleast known to me

Is there any software to find all expired trial software regardless where they are and remove them as my computer has dozens of such software and running to every program to find out is very tedious work and they;re not in any marked folder when I installed them
need a program searching for expiration dates and bring up a list of all expired software and give me the option of removing keepimg or moving it elsewhere

I know of no software to mass remove as you are requesting. Since you have not furnished your operating system, I can only suggest to go to Add/Remove programs if using XP or "Programs and Features" in Vista. There you can uninstall them individually. If there are left over remnants in the program folder these can be manually deleted. There seems no other way to removed old and obsolete programs. Sounds like the computer needs a good house cleaning.

Sorry but there are no miracle solutions.

Glenn

Soneone should easily make a program that can sniff out expiration dates easily enough as they;re usiualy embedded in the programs exe or dll file or in the syatem registrty
old shareware was dumb and could be defeated by turning back the date and time but now that developers have eliminated that option it writes a time track somewhere like the registry that it can know when the computer was actually used so think that would be an easy way to create an uninstaller that will be able to seek those out and tell the user what programs are now expired so you can remove them easily as individual files or the whole group

there has to be an offifical time record somewhere as the software isn;t contiunally running monitoring the date and time as it would lose information everytime the system reset or rebooted it counts records its installation time and relys on the Windows timekeeping record to determine how much time has elapsed for it to decide it;s expiration also if you reset the clock ahead then that time will be written into the record so if you had 30 day evaluation period and you installed the software 3 days ago and changed the date to past 3o days ahead the result would mean the expiration date had already past while in reality no time has passed I learned that the hard way as I set it ahead and my recent trialware was expired after 72 hours
it seeks Windows system official time recording then thus making it possible to compare the installation date with the actual last recorded date since the Windows OS is always running regardless and not relyimg on the software to write its oen enty into the record