Uninstall programs in Windows Vista
Except for operating system components, Windows Vista lets you uninstall any program you installed in the past, and even some programs that came pre-installed, or bundled, with your edition of Vista. Uninstalling programs is an easy way to recuperate space if your hard drive gets close to full, and an easy way to maintain your Start Menu in a manageable state. Most installers create a folder with shortcuts in the Start Menu; as you install more and more applications on your computers, your Start Menu's All Programs menu gets filled to the point where it scrolls beyond view, or needs multiple columns.
Uninstalling a program in Windows Vista
To uninstall applications in Windows Vista, open the Start Menu, and click Control Panel.
From the control panel's welcome screen, you will see a series of subtitles and links: locate the Programs section, and click the Uninstall a program link:
A running program has several components loaded into memory, or "RAM" - make sure to exit the program you want to uninstall before trying to uninstall it, to avoid any problems. But in most cases, Windows Vista will not let you uninstall the program until you have closed it.
Locate the programs to uninstall
Windows Vista's Control Panel will display a listing of programs and drivers that can be uninstalled from your computer. Depending on the number of un-installable applications you have on your PC, the list may take a while to load.
To quickly locate the program or driver you would like to uninstall from your computer, type the beginning few letters of its name in the Search field, and Windows Vista will filter the list of programs to only show those whose name partially matches what you typed.
Typing "Microsoft", for example, will filter to show only programs created by Microsoft; but in most cases, you would type the name of the program, rather than the software manufacturer's name.
Uninstall, Change, or Repair
Right-click on the program or driver you want to uninstall, and a context menu will appear, giving you up to three choices: Uninstall, Change, and Repair.
Uninstall will completely uninstall the selected application from your computer.
Change, when available, will allow you to modify the installation settings: for example, some program's installer allow you to install optional components as well: choosing Change would allow you to reconfigure which modules to install or uninstall.
Repair, if available, allows you to re-install the basics of an application if it starts having problems; this approach typically will try to repair the problems associated with the program, but retain the settings you customized in the program. This option will sometimes spare you from having to uninstall and re-install a malfunctioning application.
The Uninstall process
Once you click Uninstall, Windows Vista will (typically) remove the program from the Program Files folder and remove its shortcuts in the Start Menu. Depending on how the program was installed, the uninstaller might offer to keep the program's preferences or profile, which could be a could idea: the files in which program preferences and profile information are stored are generally small, and take very little space; also, should you decide to re-install the program later on, your preferences would be maintained from the previous installation.
If the un-installation is successful, references to the program you just uninstalled are removed from the program listing in the Control Panel's Uninstall or change a program window.
And this is how you uninstall programs and drivers from Windows Vista… A separate tutorial will next show you how to uninstall Windows updates.
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