Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Un-install? how do I do it and how to get rid of unwanted?

Feb 16, 2007 3:18AM PST

Hey, I just got my mac last summer and the problem with un-install just keep bugging me.
How do I unistall applications and make sure that it did leave anything behind cause I think my mac is clogging up because of that ^_^

please tell me cause I want to use mac more but the clog up really slowed down my macbook Silly)

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
drag the application to the trash, then,
Feb 16, 2007 3:50AM PST

empty the trash. If the application is in a folder along with companion documents like readme PDFs or text files, and there is nothing else in that folder you want, then drag the folder (hence, its contents) to the trash and empty the trash. Any tiny preference files are not worth hunting for to free hard drive space. Mac OSX is not like Windows (so you don't need to worry about unneeded registry entries or DLLs or any other files buried throughout the filing system hierarchy...

What "clog" are you talking about? I've been using/supporting/working with and on Macs and Windows machines for many years and have never heard that term used to describe a computer's behavior.

If the machine seems to be getting slower, there may be an issue with available hard drive space... How much available space do you have?

Or, if you run lots of widgets in Dashboard, there may be unnecessary CPU cycles being wasted on widgets you don't use. How many widgets are you running and how many of them require real-time updates (hence CPU cycles)?

My first recommendation is for you to increase your electronic RAM to as much as the machine can do. If this is already done, then find out what other processes are running (use "Application Manager" in your Utilities folder) - don't quit the processes, just find out what's running and let us know - and we'll take the next steps...

- Collapse -
what i'm running
Feb 17, 2007 9:57AM PST

Hey I got 17GB left in my mac is that too little left for 60GB HD? most of them are photos? i guess when i say it slows down is that when i start my mac is not as fast as it was used to.

Also finding applications running; I found that everytime I turn on my mac the hp ulities always have to load and bounce around for a long time, its really slowing my mac so i uninstalled it. But on the cpu monitor is still there as hp comunicator?

Another slower down or stuck is in preference especially when i'm chaning wallpaper, it just gets stuck most of the time

Secondly when i plug in the mini-dvi to video for LCD projector the mac just slows right down and even getting struck with keynote or powerpoint and I need to end the application all the time. BTW I have a macbook 2.0GHZ duo core with 1GB. I'm wondering is it because powerpoint is not universal but keynote is universal??!?

- Collapse -
Suggestions to do
Feb 16, 2007 10:17AM PST

There may be a couple of things to do if you haven't done them already.
1. Rebuild permissions. Find the Apple Disk Utility in the Applications folder under Utilities. Run the Disk utility, select the HD and select Permissions. Verify them and if a lot of them show up then Repair Permisssions.
2. Also in the Utilies Folder there is an Activity Monitor. Drag that into the Dock (keep the dock visible). Then open it by clicking on the dock Activity Icon. When Acitvity opens, it lists a lot of things that can be going on. When open in the pull down menu select Active Processes. It will show you what is working in the CPU and how much. If in the list window you see a process that is hogging more than 30% of the CPU and it is not identifiable you can force quit the process(I have done this but I am not sure what would happen if a critical process is forced to quit so be careful). Sometimes buggy software will start into endless loops and BOG down the CPU. Look for software names in the list that are not open or removed.
3. When you have Activity Monitor open, in the Menu Bar find "Window" and select CPU history. The Dock Activity icon will then constantly show CPU activity, conveniently in the Dock all the time you are using the Mac.
4. If still slow de-fragmenting may be in order. A good utility from ProSoft will do this very well and is fairly reasonably priced.
5. You also could reset the PRAM. On restart quickly hold down the Option, Command, "R" and "P" keys and keep them all down until you hear the Mac startup tone, continue holding until you see the restart again and hear the tone again. I am not sure what this does but it is supposed to get rid of the odd funky pram instructions and if not, at least it is good hand exercise.
Good luck, Gene B.

- Collapse -
"Clean App" program
Feb 23, 2007 10:44AM PST

I'm a new convert from WIN to MAC.
One of the first things I looked for (after Anti-virus*) was an uninstaller.
I found a program called "Clean App" at www.synium.de
I'm an avid installer of Demo programs and so far "Clean App" seems to work well.

*I know, I know -- MAC's don't get viruses, but I never trusted absolute statements and I expect to see more viruses as time passes.

- Collapse -
Let's be clear - Viruses aren't the only "infection"
Feb 23, 2007 12:23PM PST

There are hacks and trojans and other bad things that will run on Macs - and all they need is a willing participant - someone to install something that includes malware... like a keystroke watcher...

- Collapse -
Virus's
Feb 23, 2007 11:20PM PST

"*I know, I know -- MAC's don't get viruses, but I never trusted absolute statements and I expect to see more viruses as time passes."
This would imply that there are currently viruses out there doing damage to Mac's. What is it that you know?
As a matter of interest, which AV did you go with and what OS X virus defs are included in their definitions file?

As boya84 says, there are other things apart from viruses. All of them need the willing participation of the owner, with admin privileges, to install themselves. Be very wary of what you install as an "avid installer of Demo programs" (Remember the case of the few who believed that Office 2004 was only 160Kb and installed a script that deleted their home folder)(Not a virus)

P

- Collapse -
App Delete
Feb 23, 2007 2:34PM PST

App delete is a program that will remove all traces,logs,files etc. simply by dragging and dropping the unwanted application onto the App Delete icon.Works perfectly and simply.

- Collapse -
Uninstalling programs and tweaking for speed.
Feb 23, 2007 10:16PM PST

The advice from boya84 is good and you can also do some other speed enhancing maintenance tasks.

First, open disk utility and repair permissions (only do this on the drive you boot from).

Next, you can make sure your desktop doesn't have a lot of folders with large directories and subfolders in them. You can put one folder in the dock and have your most needed items in there.

Lastly, you can repair the disk by booting from the install disk and running disk utility from there or boot in single user mode and type in /sbin/fsck -fy to let the Unix subsystem clean up the drive.

As an added tweak you can run DiskWarrior to get all the files lined up neatly and even rebuild a damaged file directory if your hard drive becomes unreadable. (It recovered an external 300GB drive that I thought I had lost completely and it only took overnight - about 8 hours!)

Oh, BTW, I see that most of the pro's don't recommend any Norton utility that does anything with the hard drive - very dangerous I guess.

ole_gg

- Collapse -
No disk repair utility should be a "tweak"
Feb 24, 2007 9:48PM PST

I agree that Norton products can cause more problems than they solve, but I disagree with using Diskwarrior to "tweak" your performance.

Diskwarrior looks at the information on your hard drive and creates a new filesystem structure for it; and often the information in the new filesystem differs from the actual locations of files. For instance, I've had Diskwarrior cut off the ends of MP3 files before, and overwrite previously-okay files.

Yes, DW is a great program for getting your disk back up and running after a crash so you can recover your information; but after backing up your data you should always reformat your hard disk, reinstall the OS and put your data back; otherwise the disk will crash sooner than it did before; then sooner and sooner until it becomes so bad that you can't get your data back.

I've got a decade of experience with filesystem problems, data corruption, etc. Only use comprehensive disk repair programs in an emergency, not as general maintanance. However, you should run Disk First Aid or whatever disk utility Apple ships with OS X, as this causes much fewer invasive changes to the filesystem.

Also, I haven't used OS X much, but from my Linux use I'm pretty sure that incorrect permissions on files would cause programs to stop working - not cause the system to slow down. The thought of OS X breaking permissions on its files does make me cringe; that tiny bit of FreeBSD in Darwin must be getting pretty twisted up.

- Collapse -
un-install
Feb 27, 2007 7:00AM PST

it;s very easy to un-install your app download the follow program " clean app " it's easy to use and with it u can cleanup your mac of any app you want to un-install

- Collapse -
I wonder
Feb 27, 2007 8:46AM PST

why nobody else thought of that application.


Is it me, or is there an echo in here?

P