How to uninstall a program that refuses to uninstall normally?

You may have installed so many software applications in your computer or your friends computer.When the particular software is no longer required and you may decide to uninstall that program. If that program gets uninstalled successfully then there are no problems. But some software cannot be uninstalled. No matter what you do that software will stay in your computer. If you are facing a similar situation then here is your solution.

Generally there are two ways in which you can uninstall a program.
Use the control panel's 'Add/Remove programs' and select the software that you want to uninstall and click the 'Remove' button to uninstall.
The software group itself will have a 'Uninstall' icon to uninstall the software.

If using the above two methods you cannot uninstall the software then you have another option to remove that software. By deleting the registry keys related to that software. Here are the steps to remove an application that refuses to uninstall.

To Completely Uninstall the Software

Using the software's name or the company that developed the software you can search your computer and locate the folders in your computer and delete them.

And use the same procedure to remove from Registry, before starting create a backup.
Now click on 'Start->Run' and type 'regedit' and press enter key. Now the registry editor will open.
Right click on the my Computer icon in the registry -> Export and save the file as name.reg

Then press 'F3' button to search the next occurrence of the software key and delete. Likewise delete all occurrences.
Now reboot the computer. Check if there are any errors while rebooting. If there are no errors then deleting registry keys did not cause any problems. If there are any errors that means there was a problem due to editing the registry. Therefore restore the backup.

To check the Registry

It is very important to check whether there was any harm due to editing the registry. There are many 'Registry Error Checking' software. For example System mechanis, jv16 are some of the registry checker software. You can use these software to check your registry.

To remove the software name from the registry
Sometimes when you uninstall a program, even after installing you may still find the software listed under the 'Add/Remove programs' list. To remove the listing from the add remove programs list you can use the registry.
Open the registry editor by typing 'regedit' in the 'start->run' box.

Now click on the + icon in the 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE'. Now scroll down and select 'Microsoft', 'Windows', 'current version' and then 'uninstall'. In the right hand side watch the 'display name' and 'uninstall string'. The software name displayed in 'Display name' is what is listed in the 'Add/remove programs'.

Choose the software name that you want to delete and then click the delete button. Now in the confirmation dialog box click 'Yes'.
In the 'Uninstall string' key the windows folder in which the software is installed will be shown. Now in the explorer, go to this folder and deleted all contents.

Related: Uninstall A Software Completely