Dormant "Left Behind" File's and Folder's?

[WyattWhiteEagle]

Is there a quick and easy way to remove these "left behind" items in folders like Program Files?

What other locations contain "left behind" items which are missed by common general practices?

It may not be a whole lot on a 500gb or more HDD/SSD, but to a 74gb partition...it's A LOT.

I been running system restore, upper level disk cleanup, extended disk cleanup, ccleaner, and glary utilities.

None of these remove everything that was "left behind" when applications were unistalled.

After running all of the above, I open C:\Program Files and what do I see...

Folders of uninstalled applications. These folders contain files and more folders which contain more files.

All of the "left behind" folders can add up in disk space.

Just in the Program Files folder, one left behind folder, just one, adds up to over 1mb of disk space.

How much disk space is taken up by ALL of the "left behind" items?

 

[torchwood]

Hi WWE,

me again,

No uninstaller removes everything, as you have found, i've known about those leftover entries for a while so i tend to remove them manually.
There are also entries in the hidden programdata and appdata folders, as well as in the registry

one of the best uninstallers is REVO and as an added bonus they have a portable edition,
Download Revo Uninstaller Freeware Portable - Free and Full Download

there are also portable versions of many programs including browsers and CCleaner, hehe more rubbish on your system
note some run from the desktop others from flashdrives

13 of the Best Portable Apps in 2021

memory's going cant remember if ive previously mentioned, reduce system restore size
remove hibernation, turn off sleep and and any unwanted features including IE11

 

[WyattWhiteEagle]

Hi WWE,

me again,

No uninstaller removes everything, as you have found, i've known about those leftover entries for a while so i tend to remove them manually.
There are also entries in the hidden programdata and appdata folders, as well as in the registry

one of the best uninstallers is REVO and as an added bonus they have a portable edition,
Download Revo Uninstaller Freeware Portable - Free and Full Download

there are also portable versions of many programs including browsers and CCleaner, hehe more rubbish on your system
note some run from the desktop others from flashdrives

13 of the Best Portable Apps in 2021

memory's going cant remember if ive previously mentioned, reduce system restore size
remove hibernation, turn off sleep and and any unwanted features including IE11

Thank you, 'preciate it a bunch

system restore size, hibernation, sleep, unwanted features..yes it has been mentioned. These are things that can't be mentioned enough. Especially in my situation.

It's like little reminder's for me

Note to self

Program Files
ProgramData
AppData
Registry

Get portable uninstaller and cleaners that can run from a flashdrive, such as REVO

(Not sure if REVO can run from flashdrive)

 

[Alejandro85]

It may not be a whole lot on a 500gb or more HDD/SSD, but to a 74gb partition...it's A LOT.

Are they really? 74GB partition is a bit tiny for a modern Windows installation, but still manageable. And as you say, one folder of those "left overs" are around 1MB of disk space. That's around 0.001% of your total disk, hardly will make any difference in most situations.

In practice, those left overs are mostly configuration files and a dll or two that was in use at the time of uninstall. A reboot may clear a few of them. More often than not, all of them have negligible effect on space usage, so there is little point in chasing them down with anything more than a simple cleanup and a manual inspection of program files folders.

Of much more importance is your total disk space. There is no option if your hard disk is 74GB total, but if you have a bigger disk partitioned you can consider joining partitions together and get all the 500GB back in a single pack.

How much disk space is taken up by ALL of the "left behind" items?

We can't possibly know, unless we inspect folder by folder and know what every single program installer does. If we could knew all of them, you can simply delete them in addition to measure them. The real problem is that it's impossible to know for sure what each program does and what files it creates.

In general, it's simply not worth the cost to track down every single left over. More often than not, even with many installs/uninstalls, they don't sum to a sizable amount of space and almost never waste any resource more than a few MBs of disk space (no RAM/CPU/whatever consumed). So, unless you've spoted a very particular problem with a particular program, simply run the uninstaller, the usual cleanup routines and just move on. If the problem is really that big, just reformat the drive and do a clean install. Again, 99% of the time, left over cleanup is not worth the effort.