Uninstalling software you don't need.
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for
Askleo.com. Hey, if you're not signed up
for my weekly, confident computing newsletter, visit
Askleo.com/newsletter and sign up today.
Every week, I share tips and tricks and answers to situations like this one
to help you use your technology with more confidence.
It's really not at all uncommon for our
computers to accumulate a lot of software over time.
That, in turn, can end up affecting our performance.
Now, we may end up installing software to try it and then forget to uninstall it.
We may have software that we used for a while that we no longer use.
There's a whole raft of reasons that software accumulates.
But one of the things you can do that's worth your time
to improve your system's performance, and in fact, improve your system's
security, is to uninstall the software you don't need.
As it turns out, there's a couple of places to look.
So what we're going to do is show you exactly where.
To begin with, before you do anything, you know what I'm going to say?
Back up.
Take a full system image backup of your machine.
There are two reasons for this.
One, if an installation or
an uninstallation goes awry, then you've got something to return to.
You can restore the system image
and you're back where you started at the time the image was taken.
More interestingly, though,
my feeling is that it lets you be just a little bit more aggressive
about how you uninstall things or what you choose to uninstall.
Because again, worst case,
you go back to what the system was before you started this process.
I also advise keeping the installation media or the downloads or whatever
for the software that you have installed on your machine.
But more importantly than that,
I think the biggest safety net is this backup image.
Let's start installing.
The first place that we typically will go to is in settings.
I'm going to right-click on the Start button, click on Settings,
then I will click on apps, and then I will click on Install apps.
This is if you've been around for a while,
this is the old Add or Remove programs in Control panel.
This lists all of the apps that are currently installed on your machine.
Rather, it installs and it lists
most of the apps that are installed on your machine.
And in fact, over here with the triple dots, the ellipses at the end of each one,
if you click on those, there's usually an Uninstall.
If I go to, of course, the ones that I choose right now don't have an uninstall.
If there is an uninstall, that's how you get rid of those apps.
If I wanted to, for example,
uninstall the calculator that comes with Windows, I click on the Ellipsis,
click on Uninstall, I'll get a confirmation.
This app and its data will be uninstalled.
I'll click on Uninstall, and poof, the application is gone.
Typically, we're doing this for things
other than Windows-owned built-in components.
Again, we've accumulated software over time.
This would be the way to go through and basically identify the software
that you really don't need anymore and can get rid of.
Teams is another one.
I never ever want to use Teams, so I'm going to go ahead and uninstall it.
Fairly straightforward.
This is what you can do for the vast
majority of the software that's typically installed on a machine.
However, as they say in the commercials, but wait, there's more.
In the settings app, again, in apps, go to optional features.
Now, optional features,
I'm going to show you two separate things in optional features.
One is, yeah, there's a list here in this case of 12 features found.
You can, if you like, uninstall those.
I'm not sure that any of them are worth
uninstalling, but again, these are things that you can, if you want to, uninstall.
For example, Windows Media Player legacy.
I don't want that.
So I'll click on the little downward
facing arrow, click on Uninstall and poof, that feature is gone.
Now, the other one, and this again,
if you've been around for a while, this will look a lot more familiar,
is this item down at the bottom, Uninstalled, restart required.
I'm not going to restart right now, but I will go down to more Windows features.
Like I said, if you've been around for a while, this will look a lot more
familiar because this is the old Turn Windows features on or off.
Turning features off does remove
the components or the software that are associated with that specific feature.
So, for example, if I turn off Media Features,
that will uninstall whatever components are part of so-called media features.
Print to PDF, I like,
print to document services, remote differential compression.
Sure, let's go ahead and turn that off.
Same thing with...
Let's see, Windows PowerShell is great.
Workfolders client.
This is not something I ever use.
So as soon as I hit OK, Windows will go through the process
of uninstalling those specific features that were previously installed.
I'm not going to restart now.
That is the primary way
of getting rid of installed software and features that could also take up more
space that do install components themselves.
There's one more thing, and this one requires a third-party tool.
In my case, what I'm going to use is C Cleaner.
C Cleaner, for better or for worse,
has this option in its tools to uninstall software.
Now, if you recall, when we were looking at apps,
installed apps, there were a few apps where the Uninstall item was grayed.
That meant we couldn't uninstall those items using that interface.
The only reason I have C Cleaner on this
machine is because it will, in fact, allow you to uninstall those components.
I'll use Cortana as my example.
Cortana is on her way out anyway.
But if I wanted to uninstall that in the settings app, I couldn't.
In C Cleaner, I can.
I'll just go ahead and hit Uninstall.
I'll hit OK, and poof, Cortana is gone.
There are other apps that will do this as
well, that will uninstall some of these uninstallable components.
C Cleaner is just a familiar one.
It's been around for a while.
As always with C cleaner specifically, make sure you're not getting any
foistware, any software that is installed along with the tool.
In other words, make sure to always choose Advanced when you install this tool,
and confirm that you're getting the free version, not the free trial.
That way, you won't be getting bugged about updates.
It'll keep working, et cetera.
But bottom line here is that C Cleaner
and other third-party tools can be used to remove other components of Windows
that may not be uninstallable using the standard interfaces.
Now, one of the questions I get after going through all of these techniques
to uninstall software is, what can I safely uninstall?
I can't answer that.
I just can't answer that because the answer varies so dramatically from person
to person because we all use different things, and from machine to machine.
Some of the things that are installed for,
say, your Dell have nothing to do with my virtual machine,
and therefore I can uninstall them, but you might want to keep them.
All I can really say is think about what you need to uninstall.
If you're not sure, do a little bit of research to understand
what it's for, what it's being used for, and maybe that'll give you an answer.
If it doesn't, if you're still not sure, typically these things don't have a great
impact, and it's safest to just leave it be.
But for all those things you recognize and you know you're no longer using
and probably aren't going to use again, sure, uninstall.
Have a blast.
But back up first.
For updates, for comments,
for links related to this topic and more, visit
Askleo.com/7482.
I'm Leo Notenboom, and this is
Askleo.com. Thanks for watching.