[MiKTeX] Application Removal

[Daniele G. D. <deg...@in...>]

>Hi,
> 
>how can I properly remove MikTeX from computer?
>This is not correct application. There are many traces
>behind after the MikTeX is unistalled.
>Any idea?
> 
>
>how can I remove WinEdt correctly? There is no uninstall
>and the MS uninstall does not remove all traces.
>
>TIA
>Milos


For about 90% of the products you install, removing them completely is only
assured with a fresh reinstallation of all the others (including operating
system and drivers after reformatting all drives).

As fas as I known MS Unistall get unistall information from the registry at

 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Uninstall/...

For almost all applications running an explicit unistall command (if
present) and running MS Uninstall should give the same result.

In general only those files recognized as belonging "exclusively" to the
application can be removed. 
Configuration files generated after installation are in genereal not
recognized as such. 
Further if you copy some other files in one of the installation directory,
then the file itself and the whole directory-tree down to the file will
survive the uninstallation. 
If you link some files to an Application, removing the application does not
automatically relink those file to an appropriate application (old links are
lost). 
Paths and other variables are in general not corrected, and a lot of
registry information are not corrected/removed. 
User created shortcuts pointing to the application are in general not
removed.

Note that in general removing needed information has a much larger impact
(and possibly generates errors) as leaving some unused information back.
Thus an uninstall programm should only remove something if it is 100% sure
that it will not be needed from some other application. 

As far I know, MikTex only stores files in the declared directories
(installation + localtexmf if used), and uses own REGDATA at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/software/MiK/MiKTeX and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MiK/MikTeX.

In the latter you find the used directory: if you reconfigured it after the
installation changing them, then no uninstall will have trace of the old
ones and you also need to remove them manually. 

WinEdt also puts all its files in the installation directory and uses
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/software/WinEdt.

Note that regedit has also a search function: you could scan for miktex
resp. winedt to manually terminate the uninstall process.

Daniele