- Click the object of your lack of desire and then click Remove.
You may have installed a specialized disk cleanup program that is capa-
ble of hunting down all of the pieces of a program and removing them.
If the removal or installation process makes significant changes to the
Windows Registry or important settings to the operating system, you may be
asked to reboot your computer. In general you should follow this instruction
and do so immediately when requested by the installation or removal utility.
In some cases you can continue using the laptop, but changes made to the
Registry will not take effect until the computer is rebooted.Dealing with Background Applications .....................................................
Not every program that runs on your computer automatically occupies space
on your screen; some run in the background. They are there — and they do
use some of your important system resources, including memory and a slice
of the microprocessor’s attention — but they are wither minimized onscreen
or barely noticeable as an icon on the taskbar or system tray. You may also
see some background applications in the small notification area that usually
sits on the lower-right corner of the screen and includes the clock.Figure 18-1:
This is the
Add/Remove
Software
Utility from
Microsoft
Windows
XP. Most
current
software
will link
its own
installation
process to
this screen,
allowing
proper
installa-
tion and
removal.280 Part V: The Software Side of Life