Revo Uninstaller : Completely Remove a Program From Your PC

There comes a time in every application’s life when it need to be removed from your PC’s hard drive, either because you’ve installed something better or you simply no longer want it. One problem which many users face with the built-in Windows Uninstaller tool is that sometimes it fails to remove all the traces of a program and can leave digital junk spread over the various parts of the system. This digital junk can be registry entries, linked libraries, icons, empty folders and files that the program created after installation. Thank goodness for Revo uninstaller, it tries to be a more complete uninstaller, and it works well for that purpose.

Revo Uninstaller is perhaps the perfect uninstaller, that promise to remove every last vestige of a program with a few clicks of your mouse. It is quicker and thorough than the built-in Windows Uninstaller tool. Once Revo Uninstaller has uninstalled a program, it will give you the option to delete any files and registry entries that have been left behind.

The main screen shows up small icons of the already installed software, you simple double-click on what you need to remove. Revo then lets you select a built-in, safe, moderate or advanced uninstall**.  After the process, you can scan for leftover files or registry items that are specific to the application.

** Built-in mode: this mode is similar to Windows own Add/Remove utility and don’t offer any additional scanning. Safe mode: This is the default mode to use Revo uninstaller. It scans your PC’s registry as well as hard drive for left over files that are safe to delete. Moderate mode: lets you uninstall the software with extended scan of registry and files. Advanced mode: This is the most slowest mode. It perform a deep scan in the registry and files in hard disk, and remove every bit of unwanted items.

Aside from Uninstaller, Revo offers advanced tools and features which are just awesome. Here are some of the things you can do.

Hunter Mode:  To access this, click on the Hunter mode button in the Revo Uninstaller main window. This mode replaces the standard interface with a cross-hair icon which appear near the top top right corner of the screen. Drag this cross-hair icon onto an application window, shortcut or taskbar icon and you can choose to uninstall the program, stop the program from auto running, kill the running process, open the containing folder, take a look at the properties or perform a Google search for the selected item. These features are particularly useful, to get rid of those hard to locate pesky pieces of adware or other programs that plague your computer.

Stop Startup Program: Known as Autorun Manager, this tool will show you all the programs that start on system startup and let you kill or remove any that you don’t want to run. The option found in Tools> Optimization>Auto Run Manager. All you need to do is untick the one you wish to stop.

Erase Complete histories: Revo clears traces of your web activities, document histories from Microsoft Office applications and recent file histories from many default windows application such as Notepad.  All you need to do is to go to Tools> Track Cleaner.

Quick Access to Window: Windows has a lot of useful options for optimization, but with increasing complexity of new versions, some of them have become quite hard to find. Worry no more, you will find a collection of all the essential windows utilities in Tools> optimization> Windows tools.

Irrecoverable delete: Did you know that much of your deleted data can be recovered, if they are not been overwritten. There are programs like Recuva that can pull out those files you deleted. Worry no more. Evidence remover, found in Tools> Tracks Cleaner> Evidence Remover, overwrites all sectors on the disk from which you have recently deleted data, hence ensuring that the deleted data become unrecoverable.

Junk Files Cleaner: This tool let you get rid of all those scattered pieces of useless files left around darkest corners of your computer. To access this tool, go to Tools>Optimization> Junk Files Cleaner. And, the list of junk files that appear in this tool can be modified by going to Options>Junk Files cleaner.  Here you will find options to the specific file extensions that are considered as junk files, and other properties based on which they are selected.

Our Verdict
What we like about Revo Uninstaller is that it goes the extra mile by checking the system for unwanted items that should also be trashed and its free version satisfy our needs pretty well. But we dislike its archaic interface that seems stuck in time when this program was first created, and the pricey $40 tag for its pro version, which  add few extra features like forced uninstallation for stubborn software and support for 64-bit OS .

* We’ve  tested Revo Uninstaller 1.93 on a Windows 7 PC.