Is Revo Really The Best. I did a test on 4 uninstallers.

The number of leftovers with Install Monitor was bugging me, 6000 'seemed' too much, so I had to check the number of all registry changes made by Office installation. For comparison with other uninstallers.
This is the number -



Insane.
So Office turned out to be a good benchmark.

 

Office native uninstaller -

 

Revo Uninstaller Pro 4 latest trial

'Uninstaller' settings -



And the leftovers after Office uninstall

 

Hi @Seer

Great tests you have done.

Can you try Total Uninstall with MS Office?

Thanks

 

I did it, check post #83, there's a bit of info on how exactly I did it in post #72. Total Uninstall did the best job so far by far.
And this only shows registry changes, I did not check the file system.
And it is here to show how all of them are bad. Install Monitor practically did nothing.

[EDIT] Total Uninstall gave 2 consistent consecutive results

 

So, Total Uninstall beats Revo Uninstaller Pro hands down

Thanks

 

Hi @Seer

Any chance you can give Geek Uninstaller Pro a try with MS Office...with/without its Real-Time Install Monitor feature turn on?

Thanks again

 

As far as registry leftovers go, yes.

I'll check Geek, later perhaps.

 

I realised after I posted, that you may have meant that.

Yes it is, I didn't realise this.
https://www.crystalidea.com/blog/snapshots-vs-realtime-monitor-when-monitoring-installations
However, I note that it does not automatically monitor installations. I like the approach taken by Install Monitor, where whenever you install software, it automatically gets monitored. Having said that, it;s what the author claims and I haven't verified this myself. I'm hoping (and have suggested) that he improves the user interface, so that in the list of programs, it shows which ones have been monitored.

With regard to Revo, the monitoring is much more limited compared to Install Monitor. In the screenshot I posted it say, "DO NOT run any other setup files, programs or anything else during the installation of the program!"
Install Monitor can handle multiple installations.

So the monitoring of the install slowed it down?

I will email the author and see if I can get his thoughts on this. His software sounds great in theory, but it's not much use if it doesn't keep track of all changes.

 

in monitoring and tracing I found soft organizer did the best uninstalling and killing then the rest. I did not use the tracing or monitoring in total uninstall. In the past I used soft organizer and when installing a program would right click on it and choose start with soft organizer to trace it.

 

I think in my native language, and occasionaly that creates confusion.

Yes, with other uninstallers the Office installation was roughly 7-9 mins, with Install Monitor around 25. It also utilized all CPU cores at 70% roughly, while others used around 20-30%.
So it was doing something.

Just link him to RegistyChangesView.
To be clear, all these numbers in the lower left corner should not be taken literally. There is stuff there that belongs to normal Windows operations, but it is miniscule. I took care of that using another Sofer's tool, RegFromApp. To calm the system down as much as possible.
But each screenshot clearly shows entries that should not be there after uninstall. And all of them are trivial/easy to remove.

It is possible to monitor every smallest change, as RegistryChangesView clearly shows. But when it comes to reversing that, it's not that simple. Windows OS and app interactions got so complicated, there are cases (much worse than Office) where if the installation is traced exactly and logs followed literally then the system will be broken (well, not unbootable, but needed things deleted).

 

Geek Uninstaller Pro trial

Unfortunately, I could not find the full version anywhere, not even on the 'other side'.
And this is what Geek showed me at the end of uninstall -



Without that, the results are 0 -

 

Yes, I agree with you that Install Monitor's approach is definitely better than Revo and Geek

 

Thanks for trying out

 

Never heard of that, I'll try it.
Tomorrow.

 

https://www.chemtable.com/soft-organizer.htm

they offer 2 products that have the same uninstall feature and I used reg orginizer ( https://www.chemtable.com/organizer.htm ) since it offered a very deep cleaning of registry and files and junks that after uninstalling and usage left hardly any left over.

I used it for a long time until total uninstall a few days ago. Reg-organizer install monitoring via right-click was the best when I needed to uninstall a software and it left the least residue in my test compared to others I used. The deep cleaning feature is very powerful and it rely did go deep into windows and even cleaning the WIN XSX. I only used its deep cleaning option once since it removed too much files that I felt like I have a fresh new OP installed. It even removed my drivers incl. graphics and many others. took me a while trying to get all back. I do not know how it would do on office but if it can clean this much on a windows, it may remove office junks aswell.

anyone want to test office with reg-organizer uninstall and also its deepest cleaning feature would be very interesting to see.

 

From the link -

Which is exactly what I did. (It is a bit unintuitive at first)
I try, but I fail to see my fault.

 

You didn't do anything wrong. Its monitoring works automatically, but it seems it doesn't work as well as it should.

 

Yeah, I always tend to suspect myself first. Anyone can be careless sometimes.
But this is a simple app, the only options are folder exceptions (iirc).

 

Concerning the nirsoft, he makes lots of good apps.

He states making a FULL registry BU, can be a security hazard, so I'm thinking this is a cool way to restore the system, the registry would be as complete a restore as anything else...Or even better....

So I wonder why not make a Full registry BU, and then put in in a folder and zip the whole folder with a good password, using RAR, and only unzip it and use it for restoring the system, then zip it back up ?

 

It's here -

He explains why these hives are not selected (and included in the snapshot) by default.

We're going off topic now, but yes, it "could be" and "might" and "if".
If I leave my registry hive in a public transport.
It's more of a disclaimer.

Off topic again, and would require a bit of explaining, but
That would be a very bad idea.

 

What do u mean off topic? You brought it up....LOL

 

I mean this is not the place to discuss RegistryChangesView and it's features, but the uninstallers.
The link is there for anyone who wants to get acquainted with the software.

 

Nice work.
It's a shame you didn't include Total Uninstall in your tests.
I haven't used it myself. I use Revo. But Total Uninstall is consistently mentioned as being the best in various forums I visit. You can even backup and restore all your program settings from one computer to another, or the same computer if you do a clean install.

 

Soft Organizer 7.30 freeware

The free version does not allow to trace installs at all. It immediately pops up a message similar to Geek's. I reimaged the system and installed

Soft Organizer 7.28 full

This app will confuse most users, at least when Office is (and other complicated apps are) concerned.

Office installation is consisted of many small msi/msp packages. Soft Organizer treats each package as a separate app when it adds it to the list of installed programs -



It offers to stack all of them together in a single folder, but if you just click on "Next" you will end up with an unusable folder that has no "Uninstall" button on it and you can't uninstall all of them in bulk. Instead, you need to be careful, and select from the drop down (see screenshot) "Microsoft Office Proffesional Plus 2016" folder in order to invoke native uninstaller and uninstall Office properly.



I hope that was clear.

After the native uninstaller finishes it's thing, Soft Organizer scrubs the system, offers to delete more items, and these are the results -



Next.