Removing a difficult program from your PC using file location
So you have this difficult third party app that got into your PC. You cannot uninstall it from the Control panel because the icon is simply not there. You are starring at something you do not know how to get rid of. Well there is a Windows solution to this kind of challenge and it is something you should learn. Of course, it doubles as a shortcut to uninstalling any program from your computer if do not wish to go to the control panel.
This method called uninstall by file location removes a program from your PC using the uninstall application found in every installation folder in your PC. Now we will see how to do it.
Uninstalling by file location
So basically, we will try to locate the installation folder of the selected program and access the uninstall application inside. Then we can run the uninstall application and remove the program through it.
Note: In this sample uninstallation, I will use this method to remove a program on my PC. The program I will remove is aTube Catcher. You can follow the same steps to remove any other program. Here are the steps:
Step 1: Right-click the program icon and from the menu options that, click Open file location. Check the image below.
The file location will open the installation folder containing all the program files. Now you need to identify and run the uninstall application from the many files inside this folder.
It is easy to identify the uninstall application because there is a genaral naming convention for this file. The name usually starts with unins and any other thing that is included in the name. The file type is usually application. So lets see that with the example above and one other example.
Notice in arrow 1 above that the name of of the file starts with 'unins' and arrow 2 shows the file type is 'application'. That is what we are looking for.
Once you identify the uninstaller, you should double-click it to run. Let me do that now.
As you can see above, there is a confirmation pop up window. Once I click yes, the program is removed from my PC.
What if I did not see the "unins file?
Depending on how the program was built, you may not see the unins file from the file location. But you will definitely see an installer file which is also an application. You will double-click this file as if you want to do a fresh installation. At the point, the installer will pop up an uninstaller window since you cannot do a double installation on the program. You will follow the prompt and remove the program from your PC.
Conclusion
Some programs are designed not to include the registry for control panel. So as such, you might not see the icon if your try to remove them from the control panel. The file location method is a guaranteed way of getting around this issue. Even for programs that do appear in the control panel, this is a cool short cut to doing any uninstallation.
Note: I did all the screenshots from my Windows 10 Pro PC.
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