 | By Ian “Gizmo” Richards In my Sept. 17 and Oct. 1 series on program uninstallation, I recommended free program uninstallers from Revo and ZSoft. I’ve had a clutch of subscriber e-mails asking me to explain the difference between these two products and to name the one I prefer. |
The uninstaller that cleans up after the fact
Even though both Revo Uninstaller and ZSoft Uninstaller are excellent programs, they work in very different ways. Revo sweeps up leftovers after a program has been uninstalled using the app’s own uninstaller, while ZSoft uninstalls programs by using before-and-after-installation snapshots it creates.
Think of Revo as a replacement for the standard uninstall routine you’ll find in the Windows Control Panel. Both the standard Windows uninstaller and Revo use the uninstaller supplied by the developer of the program you want to remove.
Revo one-ups the Windows applet by thoroughly cleaning up any files and Registry entries left over by the developer-supplied uninstallation routine. To do this, Revo analyzes your system prior to the uninstallation and again after the uninstaller has run.
This information is used to identify the files, folders, and Registry entries created when the program was installed. Revo then looks at what’s still on your computer after the uninstallation and offers to remove these hangers-on.
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