Description:
McAfee Uninstaller is a multipurpose disk-management tool. It's good for deleting unused files and applications--all the dead wood from your hard disks. Though Uninstaller works under Windows 95, 98, and NT 4.0, we had some trouble installing this product under Windows NT. The default setup program refuses to work under that operating system; Windows NT users have to dig into the CD-ROM using Explorer, then run a setup program that's found in a subfolder. It is a minor inconvenience; Windows 95 and 98 users don't have any trouble at all. At setup time, Uninstaller allows you to specify (by file-name extension) kinds of files Uninstaller should never delete. It then scans your hard disks, searching for folders it identifies as important and undeletable (apparently, it doesn't want to delete folders that contain a lot of data files, such as word processing documents and accounting files). Then, you're invited to unleash some QuickClean routines on your hard disks. The QuickClean routines delete such obvious garbage as the contents of your Recycle Bin, the files in your Internet cache, and shortcut files whose references are bad, a well as dead Registry entries. You can establish a schedule for the QuickClean cleanups at installation time if you like. When you later run Uninstaller, the program takes some time to fully scan the contents of your hard disks. It then presents you with some options: - Remove, which gets rid of an installed application you no longer want
- Archive, which compresses an application into a relatively small file
- Move, which relocates an application to another place on your file system, adjusting references among files accordingly
- Transport, which is similar to Archive except it's meant to move an application (and its preference settings) to another computer
- Restore, which reverses an Archive function
- BackTrack, which watches as applications are installed and can undo their installations more accurately as a result
- SpaceMaker and PowerClean, which help you identify files that may be deleted in order to recover space
SpaceMaker and PowerClean are especially cool. They (the difference between the two is in their levels of sugarcoating) identify various kinds of files that are typically deletable, such as duplicates and unreferenced code libraries. It then allows you to delete them. Though hard disk space is cheaper than ever, and conserving space is less important than it used to be in the days of dollar-a-meg hard disks, McAfee Uninstaller can help you recover wasted space on your hard disk and generally tidy things up.
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