Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Removing and changing programs

Windows lives only to serve and more than anything, Windows serves programs. Most of us spend our time working inside programs such as Outlook or Word or Adobe Photoshop. Windows acts as traffic cop and nanny but doesn't do the heavy lifting. Programs rule. Users rely on Windows to keep the programs in line.

Installing programs is easy. When you want to install a program, you typically insert a CD into your CD drive and follow the instructions or doubleclick a downloaded program. You've done that a hundred times.

Removing well-behaved programs is just as easy, if you follow the instructions in this section. Changing programs, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish, as you will soon discover.

Windows 7 includes a one-stop shopping point for removing and making massive changes to programs. To get to it, choose Start → Control Panel, and then under the Programs heading, click the Uninstall a Program link.

Remember When Windows 7 talks about changing programs, it isn't talking about making minor twiddles - this isn't the place to go if you want Microsoft Word to stop showing you rulers, for example. The Uninstall or Change a Program dialog box is designed to activate or deactivate big chunks of a program - graft on a new arm or lop off an unused head (of which there are many, particularly in Office). In the Uninstall or Change a Program dialog box for Office 2007, for example, you may tell Excel that you want to use its Analysis ToolPak add-in for financial analysis. Similarly, you may use the Uninstall or Change a Program dialog box to obliterate the Office speech recognition capabilities.

If you want to install a big chunk of a program, you have to click the Uninstall a Program link in the Control Panel. The terminology stinks. Windows 7 really should say something like "Bring up a program's installer or uninstaller."

Windows 7 itself doesn't do much in the Uninstall or Change a Program dialog box. Windows 7 primarily acts as a gathering point: Well-behaved programs, when they're installed, are supposed to stick their uninstallers where the Uninstall or Change a Program dialog box can find them. That way, you have one centralized place to look in when you want to get rid of a program. Microsoft doesn't write the uninstallers that the Uninstall or Change a Program dialog box runs; if you have a gripe about a program's uninstaller, you need to talk to the company that made the program.

A few school-of-hard-knocks comments pertain:

• If you want to remove a program and it isn't listed here, there's a 99 percent chance that the program you want to remove is a piece of scumware. Hop onto Google and search for the name of the program - make sure you copy it precisely - and add the term uninstall. You may be in for some interesting times.
• You rarely use the Uninstall or Change a Program dialog box to remove parts of a program. Either you try to add features in a program that you forgot to include when you originally installed the program - most commonly with Office - or you want to delete a program entirely, to wipe its sorry tail off your hard drive.
  When you install a program, install all of it. With large hard drives so cheap that they're likely candidates for a landfill, it never pays to cut back on installed features to save a few megabytes.
• Many uninstallers, for reasons known only to their company's programmers (I don't mention Adobe by name), require you to insert the program's CD into your CD drive before you uninstall the program. That's like requiring you to show your dog's vaccination records before you kick it out of the house.

When you start a program's uninstaller, you're at the mercy of the uninstaller and the programmers who wrote it. Windows doesn't even enter into the picture.

Removing Windows patches

If you install a Windows patch and discover a minute (or a day or week) later that the patch causes more problems than it solves, you may - may - be able to roll back the patch.

To see whether the fix that bedevils you can be exorcised, choose Start → Control Panel → Programs, and under Programs and Features, click View Installed Updates.

Windows 7 presents you with a list of all patches that have been applied to your system. Click the one that's the most likely source of your problems, and then click the Remove button. If you're allowed to uninstall the patch, Windows 7 does it for you.