Application Uninstallation Frustration
I’m going to be building a new computer in the near future. It’s going to be rather high-end and I intend to use it exclusively for gaming. The system I have now will be used for my programming projects. With that in mind, I’ve decided to go ahead and remove nearly all of the games from my current system - I’m keeping Quake 3 because I often play around with modifying the source code, and Dark Age of Camelot because I play it regularly.
Over the past few months I’ve installed several older games I had lying around, some newer games I purchased online, and a handful of games I bought during my trip to the States. I’ve only been playing a couple of them with any regularity, so there was no sense in keeping them all around. Little did I know how big of a headache a simple uninstall was going to become.
I can remember back in the DOS days when installing games usually involved some sort of troubleshooting. Computer users had to be savvy, otherwise they were in for major disappointment. Editing config.sys or autoexec.bat, configuring sound drivers, and whatever else we did back in those days, required a solid understanding of the DOS command line. All of that began to change with the coming of Windows 95, DirectX, OpenGL, and installation software like InstallShield. The user friendliness of software installation increased tremendously and installation problems that required troubleshooting became much less frequent. That’s sweet. But there’s a downside to all of this user friendliness - the issues that do arise now are much less likely to be fixable by the user.
Gone are the days when editing autoexec.bat could solve your problems. Now, you have to browse through the technical support knowledge base from the game publisher and hope you can find an answer to your problem. Sometimes, the answer you find is that you have to wait for a patch. Other times, the solutions don’t work. And still others, there is no solution at all. I rarely have such problems, but I did with one of the games from the EA Sports 5-pack I bought. Madden 2004 installed fine, but wouldn’t execute. No errors, no logs, no nothing. I never even saw a window. I was unable to find a solution so I gave up. I decided to wait for the new system and ask for help if it doesn’t work then.
Installation headaches are to be expected from time to time. The silly anti-piracy software some publishers use really can tarnish the user experience. Sometimes such software causes installation to fail on some systems. This happened to me a few years back with one game and still today with some games (though I’ve not seen it recently). What I have never experienced though, is trouble with uninstalling software. Today, in the process of removing 10+ games from my computer, only 3 or 4 of them uninstalled smoothly and did exactly what they were supposed to do.
It was a nightmare. The first problem came while uninstalling Rome: Total War. First, I had to uninstall the 1.3 patch. That went well. Then came the main uninstallation. The progress bar hung up near the end and the app froze. After nearly 10 minutes, I was getting ready to alt-tab-delete->End Task when the thing errored out. From that point the uninstaller would no longer run and I had to manually remove the remainder of the files (including the registry keys).
The next headache came from Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004. I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of this game and really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to install it again when I get the new machine. I’m not looking forward to uninstalling it ever again though. The damn thing wouldn’t run. Every time I tried to uninstall, from the Add Remove Programs window or the direct link in the Start menu, I would get an error talking about a missing registration file and that I needed to insert CD 1. Inserting CD 1 and selecting Uninstall from the autorun menu resulted in the same error message. Talk about frustrating. Before going through and manually removing anything, I search the EA knowledge base. Luckily, I found a guide on how to remove the program manually in case the uninstaller fails. It was a moron guide (for people who don’t know the difference between Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer), but the useful bit was a list of all of the registry keys that belonged to the app so that I didn’t need to search for them. That was a time saver.
Those were the only two technical issues I had. The other uninstallers managed to piss me off in one way or another though. Several of them did not remove the application directories. Most of them left icons on the desktop. Some of them left stray registry keys in the registry. And a few of them left crap lying around in either the user or My Documents directories. This is something that the developers can control.
How hard is it to use an installer that knows how to remove the app directory? We’ve been using them for years now. How hard is it to remove the stuff in the user and My Documents folders? Why on earth would they leave crap in the registry? Some years ago I bundled my first ever game into an installation package. The uninstaller did everything it was supposed to do and did not leave anything hanging around. Wasn’t hard at all. The 3 or 4 games that did what they were supposed to today asked me if I wanted to keep my saved games or user profiles. That’s perfect. Give me the option.
Technical problems with uninstallers are, sometimes, beyond the developer’s control. But what gets removed upon uninstall is directly in the developer’s or publisher’s control. Leaving unwanted crap behind is just unprofessional and sloppy. When I want to unsinstall an application, I want it completely removed. There should always be an option to keep saved games and user profiles for those who do want to keep them (for transfer to another computer later, for example). Automatically removing all of that, or automatically leaving it all in place, is just wrong. And there is no reason at all to leave behind application icons or registry entries.
You’d think that after 20+ years of setup and installation programs they’d have it down by now.