How to Remove Unused Programs

Do you know when, at times, your wardrobe gets so cluttered up, you always find yourself wasting lots of time finding the clothes you need? Then, spring cleaning arrives and you make up your mind to toss all the clothes you never really use... and then your wardrobe looks significantly better and you no longer find it so hard to find what you need. Sound familiar?

Believe it or not, computers are not unlike a wardrobe, in that cluttering them with applications and programs will make them less efficient and harder to use. This article will show you how you can significantly improve your computer performance by removing unused programs.

Why should you remove unused programs?

There are various good reasons why you may want to remove unused programs from your computer. The most obvious point is, of course, releasing space from your hard drive. However, as an added bonus, you may just find your computer gets significantly faster once you remove a bunch of unused applications.

If you're an average computer user, you probably have a tendency to absent-mindedly install all kinds of programs you come across, most of which you end up never using. As matter of fact, you probably don't even remember having installed some of those dozens of programs in your Windows taskbar, right?

That's actually very common, but what's important is that you can make your computer more responsive by tracking down and uninstalling all the programs you don't really need.

How to remove unused programs?

To begin with, you should make sure you know what the purpose is, of any program you're trying to uninstall. There's no point in going in a blind cleaning spree, if that will make you waste your time having to reinstall applications you deleted by accident.

When you're ready to begin (meaning you've located a program you really have no use for and you're pretty sure you want to remove it), there are essentially two ways you can get it done:

1) Look for the "uninstall" function, usually bellow the program executable in the applications menu. Click the "Start" button and look for the application you're trying to dismiss. Some programs feature an "uninstall" option right in there, which is outright the simplest and most convenient way to get it removed from a machine. If there is no such option, don't lose hope: on to step 2.

When a program doesn't include an express "uninstall" feature in its application folder in the Start menu, then you will have resort to Windows Uninstaller, a tool in your operating system that handles just that. To launch Windows Uninstaller, click on the "Start button", open "Control Panel" and look for something called "add/remove programs". This is a handy application that you can use to keep track of the installed programs in your system and remove them, if you want. Just look for the program you're trying to remove in the list and click the "remove" button. Presto!

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-By Dominic

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