John S. said:
Hang on a bit ...
Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't sound all that
logical to me. When you use the Windows Control Panel to
uninstall something, aren't you simply running an uninstall
script that was created by the original software designer before
SP2 came into existence?
I can't understand why this would be any more reliable than TUN.
If I have missed something I would be grateful for an explanation
of why the unistall script would be safer than TUN's reversal of
the changes it initially monitored.
A well written uninstall script will cleanly remove all traces of
a program including any registry entries that might have been
added long after the program was installed (eg a change to
the programs preferences might add a new registry value).
TUN will remove the changes it detected between its two
scans, a few of these may have nothing to do with the
installed program and need to be removed from its list
otherwise using it to uninstall might cause problems.
As I recall as a safety feature TUN will not remove registry
values that have been subsequently added to keys that
were created by the install process as it has no way of
knowing which keys were created exclusively for the use
of the monitored program.
I find Tun useful for removing programs where the proper
uninstall fails dismally (I've also used it to uninstall a
spyware app as I didn't trust the supplied uninstaller).
I sometimes use its tun files to create a registry merge file
of what if anything was left behind by a programs
uninstaller so I can edit out anything I'm unsure about
and remove the rest.
(I use TUN with Windows 98 and did a first pass scan
left the system running for a short while followed by a reboot
and let TUN do the second scan without installing anything
to get a list of keys and files I should add to TUN's ignore list)
Also I don't see much point in uninstalling via the control
panel, then monitoring a re-install with TUN. Surely, if the
control panel uninstall was incomplete (eg fails to remove the
programme's main folder), then TUN won't become aware of those
incompletely removed elements when the reinstall is done, so TUN
will subsequently be unable to do any better uninstall than
Windows control panel did in the first place??
I agree, Total Uninstall works using a pre install snapshot
so it will just detect and remove the components the uninstall
script removes anyway, plus any incidental changes made
by windows or background process that have nothing to do
with the install so shouldn't be reversed (unless those modified
folders/registry keys have previously been added to the ignore
list or you manually prune them out). At best it would
do exactly the same job as the uninstall script.
For this to work one would need an uninstaller that monitored
and logged writes to the registry and filesystem as they happened.
