Poking around Win Explorer, I found some apps that I tried and thought were removed by their Uninstallers. Then there are a few more that had no Uninstaller, weren't listed in Control Panel / Add or Remove Programs, so I forgot they were still there.

Is it OK to just delete the program file folder? Should I leave them? How to do this without causing harm?

 

If you do do it like that, it wouldn't be a bad idea to run a disk defragment afterwards. I delete the files like that a lot, but I have yet to actually have to reformat my hard drive because of it, (been almost a year now since the last install) so I imagine it is safe. Just do not get rid of any windows folders unless you know what you're doing.

 

Bob, often times when you use the add/remove app it will leave the yellow folders left for the application.

You can open those up and see that the whole program is no longer there.
Often times it is just a text file or two of the settings and any saved info that was associated with the app.

It is perfectly safe to dump the folders into the trash.

But to be safe, after dumping the folders, reboot the PC, then see if any errors come up.

I have quite a few apps I get rid of, and there are quite a few that the uninstaller leaves behind a few folders with just a few files that were config files for the apps.

 

Thanks. A few folders contain remnants, a couple others are the complete app with all files and none are part of Windows, so it sounds safe to delete and defrag, prolly wouldn't hurt to run checkdisk too.

 

Well, I have a question that is similar to this one...

I have two hard drives, and one I keep programs that I use (such as games, word, and such) and the other I use to store my other files (such as pictures, movies, music, and back up files) I don't have a partition running on the other one, because I have had it fail on me while running one on there, so I just use it for storage space. Well, I stopped playing a game on my normal hard drive, so I moved the file over to my storage hard drive, and tried to go to Add/Remove to get rid of the game. It is on the list, but every time I click Change/Remove, nothing happens. I looked for the folder in my master hard drive, and it wasn't in there. Is it because I moved it to the other hard drive that it will not let me get rid of it? If that is the case, then oh well.

 

Wish I could help, sorry. BTW, your avatars crack me up.

 

Yep, the add/removes apps look to the Windows Registry on where to remove the program from.