Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Another PC challenged question – Uninstaller

What’s the best program for uninstalling software? Something that can find stuff that the windows uninstaller can’t….

I bought this Western Digital external hard drive and started using it, but the stupid thing wouldn’t wake up until I installed the back up software that came with it. The pricks at WD decided this software shouldn’t be included with the drive and put a 30 day trial on it. After 30 day’s you have to buy it to get a key. I already have back up software that’s much better, so I figured I’d just un-install this WD software. I can’t find it anywhere….. Every time the computer is turned on, I have all these damn windows that pop up telling me I need to register this software. It’s very frustrating.

High quality geeks will be along shortly to answer your question...

1. Did you try to find relevant entries in Start - Control Panel - Add/Remove programs?
2. You could fish around in c:\programs and find the appropriate folder and just delete it.
3. Startup inspector for Windows is free and does a decent job of helping you figure out and fix those programs that are running automatically when you restart.

That's all I got. Sorry.

Revo uninstaller is an excellent program(I use it), and is also free. It's highly recommended to use a program other than Add/Remove through Windows because they are far more thorough.

Are you saying you can't find the location on your C drive where the backup software is installed? Does it not show up in the add/remove software utility on the control panel? Did you check on the start menu to see if the install added a group that may include an uninstaller?

Edit: you can try bringing up the task manager and looking for the main executable for the program. Then use search to find the exe and you have the location where its installed.

Mike, If you are running Vista, Windows Defender should be able to find it, it just may be under a different name.
I never thought I would promote Vista but ever since I got my new computer I've really like it, I just upgraded my old Gateway with it also.

I've only got one computer with Vista... a Dell I bought specifically for Photoshop work. Despite all the grumblings about Vista, I've never had a problem with it..

Of course, I'm leading this OT... Sorry Mike...

Thanks Guys......

This software is nowhere to be found with the uninstaller. I can find the folder in Windows Explorer though. An IT friend of mine told me years ago to never just delete program folders for the purpose of uninstalling the software. He told that when you do this, it does not cleanly remove the software and you will be plagued with problems forever that would require a complete hard drive re-format to resolve. His advice was to always use the uninstaller whenever possible. I took that advice to heart ever since.

I have Defender turned off. I’m running Norton Home Security. I bought into the Norton Scam / Swindle…. I’ll turn Defender back on and see what it’ll do for me.

I’ll look into this Revo software as well.

I’m spending entirely too much time screwing with computers this week…….

The problem you are having is exactly why I chose Acronis backup and did a full system backup on clean systems.

The next time something intractable installs itself, I will simply resore the system from backup. Its a great solution even if it takes 24 hours when you don't know what you are doing.

The other suggestion I received is to create a build book for each computer. Basically its a log of what is installed and what OS changes have been made.

You can also try an internet search to see if someone else has run into and already solved this problem.

IIRC, the back up software remains on the removeable drive and never actually installs on the C drive.

Good call, Jay. It might be something as simple as deleting an autorun file in the root of the external drive.