treat it with kid gloves, because heavy-handed tinkering could
potentially cause more problems than it solves.
So, what’s the best way to deal with old, unwanted apps? To
completely expunge them from your system, of course. There’s
nothing wrong with Windows’ built-in uninstallation procedures.
You can flit through your Start menu, right-clicking things that
shouldn’t be there, and using the “Uninstall” option to get rid of
them. Or you could use the Apps & Features tool, accessible from
Windows’ settings panel, which (sometimes) offers up a bit more
detailed information about when a program was installed, and
when you last deemed it important enough to run it.
That usually works just fine. But if you’d like some more
reassurance that a troublesome app is really gone, and with
it any trace of its existence (we’re well aware that revenge
©^ is usually a big contributor to any uninstallation process),
MI
CR
OS
OF
T
GO VIRTUAL INSTEAD
We’re at the point in the
PC’s evolution where the
overheads of virtualization
are proportionately so small,
and the technology enabling
it so plentiful, that running
an everyday OS in a virtual
machine is entirely reasonable.
You obviously won’t get
100 percent of bare metal
performance from a virtualized
instance of Windows 10, but it
has a host of advantages. When
you’ve got a system running
just as you like it, you can
take a snapshot, then quickly
return to it at any point in the
future. You can whip up a fresh
copy of Windows in minutes,
without any risk to your
existing install. You can fire
up other operating systems,
and run them simultaneously
on the same machine. If you’re
the kind of person who loves to
settle down to a good Windows
reinstall in the evening,then you’re probably the
right candidate for running a
virtualized system.
We could fill an entire issue
of Maximum PC with ways to
do it, but if you’re willing to
experiment, here’s a broad
framework that’s a good
place to start. Use Fedora
Workstation as your host
OS (https://getfedora.org/
en/workstation) and use the
included Boxes app (a front
end for KVM/QEMU) to get your
VMs up and running. Install
VirtIO to ensure that all of the
IO functions work properly,
and SPICE to deal with 3D
acceleration. And make sure
you’ve accessed your BIOS/
UEFI settings and enabled all
the good stuff that makes VMs
work well—specifically Intel-
VT or AMD-V, depending on
your platform.
If you fancy a challenge,
both VMWare ESXi andMicrosoft Hyper-V Server
are pro-grade bare-metal
hypervisors, which put a
minimal layer between your
host OS and the hardwarethey’re working with, but they
do require some pro-grade
understanding to get the most
out of them, so are beyond the
scope of this feature.If you have Windows 10 Pro installed on your machine, you have
access to some form of Hyper-V already.Task Manager can help squash auto-running programs, but
Autoruns can do a whole lot more.Need to uninstall troublesome software? Windows’ own tools
are probably good enough for the task.
something like the free version of IoBit Uninstaller 8 (www.iobit.
com) can work wonders. It makes software removal quick and
straightforward, and it hunts for absolutely every file associated
with the app that’s on death row. We wouldn’t opt for the paid-for
Pro version, even though it adds extra tools for stripping away
manufacturer bloatware, because apps such as PC Decrapifier
(www.pcdecrapifier.com) do the job just fine without any outlay. It
might be tempting to try out CCleaner (www.ccleaner.com), too,
given that it can even get rid of Microsoft’s default apps, and we’re
not going to stop you—but it’s worth pointing out that CCleaner
can be very annoying in terms of notifications. If we do use it, it’s
generally immediately removed once the task is complete.maximumpc.com OCT 2019 MAXIMUM PC 29