Some applications have a trial period and, after that period, you might choose to remove the application. Left On Purpose – As one comment mentioned, these entries could have been left on purpose. For instance, two applications from the same developer that write to the same keys. It could also be that there is more than one application that uses those keys.
In addition to that, the uninstaller might not have/use the proper permissions to remove the registry entries. The following is a list of some cases and reasons why registry entries are left behind:īad Programming – The developer did not write the application uninstaller properly and the registry entries are left behind. There are many reasons why this is the case, however, it is not the fault of Microsoft or the Windows operating system. In the setup of my company’s programs, I delete the per-machine stuff but do not touch the per-user stuff, not even of the user currently running the setup. The same also applies to files in the per-user directories. You uninstall the application on TS1, now all the settings for all users are gone on TS2 because you have roaming profiles. Say you have two terminal servers running one application. A terminal server is basically one Windows machine where multiple users log-in at the same time and use applications. terminal services) and then delete all settings on uninstall, you could really mess up and delete stuff that is actually still in use. What about the other users? It could try to enumerate all users, but their registry keys might not be loaded (Windows is lazy and only loads the things it needs).īut you should not even try that. This happens if you started the uninstaller from a non-admin account and then entered the credentials of an admin account, the setup is now running under that account, not the first one.
If a program is installed per machine (which most are) and multiple users use it, what should the uninstaller do? It could safely remove the user settings of the current account, but the current account might not be your account. While keeping leftovers in LocalMachine is laziness (as pointed out by the other answers), it is not possible to clean the CurrentUser part. Normally, the setup writes values into LocalMachine, and the running program only writes into CurrentUser (actually, unless the setup messes with the permissions, the running program cannot write into LocalMachine). The registry has multiple root nodes but only two interesting ones: LocalMachine and CurrentUser. First up, Lukas Rieger:īecause it is impossible. SuperUser contributors Lukas Rieger and Keltari have the answer for us.
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