Time for an honest discussion: Removing P3D from hard-drive.

[Twenty6 693]

4 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

The 45MB hard disk in my first ever PC (January 1992) begs to differ

And as Bill Gates supposedly said, "Who's gonna need more than 640K?"

[jorgensandersen 21]

When I want to make sure that P3D is gone - as in disappeared completely - I go to File Explorer, and in the search box in the top right corner I type ":prepar3d". And I do this on both the drive where P3D is installed, and on the C drive.

Jorgen

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

7 minutes ago, Rusty said:

As discussed, the overwhelming consensus seems to be a full reinstall of Windows due to the fact some aspects still linger deep within the registry. 

For the record I’ve never done that. If there are a few broken registry entries (unlikely) it’s certainly not going to affect performance. In fact, in over 30 years of using various flight sim programs I’ve never felt the need to reinstall Windows. But each to their own…

If you have a freeware antivirus program like Avast it will continually tell you there are problems with your Registry that can only be solved by buying the payware version. Hmmm. 🤔

[Rusty 11]

58 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

For the record I’ve never done that. If there are a few broken registry entries (unlikely) it’s certainly not going to affect performance. In fact, in over 30 years of using various flight sim programs I’ve never felt the need to reinstall Windows. But each to their own…

If you have a freeware antivirus program like Avast it will continually tell you there are problems with your Registry that can only be solved by buying the payware version. Hmmm. 🤔

Cheers Ray, that's good to know! Unfortunately I am one of those types, need to go the Full Monty. 🤪

One insanely good thing about MSFS also is that reinstalling is a breeze, most of the addons for P3D come "Built In" for MSFS. Out of interest, if I was to get a new SSD for MSFS can one simply copy and paste over (assuming I renamed the directory to the original one) or would a full reinstall be required?

Edited November 3, 2022 by Rusty
Added SSD Query.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

2 minutes ago, Rusty said:

Cheers Ray, that's good to know! Unfortunately I am one of those types, need to go the Full Monty. 🤪

I guess you're retired and have plenty of time! 😁

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

1 hour ago, Rusty said:

One insanely good thing about MSFS also is that reinstalling is a breeze, most of the addons for P3D come "Built In" for MSFS. Out of interest, if I was to get a new SSD for MSFS can one simply copy and paste over (assuming I renamed the directory to the original one) or would a full reinstall be required?

That question is probably best asked in the MSFS forum. 😉

[W2DR 1,860]

11 hours ago, Torsen said:

Me think you mean MB and not GB...

You are, of course, absolutely right. Just a brain-fart on my side. I've gotten so used to GB over the years that MB hardly ever enters my mind. Thanks for the correction.

[honanhal 1,420]

13 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

For the record I’ve never done that. If there are a few broken registry entries (unlikely) it’s certainly not going to affect performance.

For what it's worth, when I uninstalled P3D I found myself with significantly more than a few broken registry entries. In fact, even after having gone to great lengths to uninstall everything the "right way," my "add or remove programs" in Windows remains a hard-to-navigate rats nest of broken-link P3D addons that can't be uninstalled normally. Sure, it doesn't affect performance (I hope not!) but it is definitely an annoyance I could have happily done without.

That said, I definitely didn't actually reinstall Windows! But I'll be glad to be rid of the mess with my next computer, which is overdue anyway.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

@honanhal, Ccleaner (free for home users) can tidy up the Registry and can also remove programs from Add/Remove Programs where the uninstall failed.

Don’t worry about any mess. Providing your other programs and Windows itself work that’s the important thing.

[newtie 533]

9 hours ago, honanhal said:

For what it's worth, when I uninstalled P3D I found myself with significantly more than a few broken registry entries. In fact, even after having gone to great lengths to uninstall everything the "right way," my "add or remove programs" in Windows remains a hard-to-navigate rats nest of broken-link P3D addons that can't be uninstalled normally. Sure, it doesn't affect performance (I hope not!) but it is definitely an annoyance I could have happily done without.

That said, I definitely didn't actually reinstall Windows! But I'll be glad to be rid of the mess with my next computer, which is overdue anyway.

Revo Uninstaller has a 'traced install' facility that monitors and records an app installation including reg entries. Pretty amazing what apps install on your machine and don't remove on uninstall particularly registry untries. Been using this for years. Always have had a very clean machine :>)

Thirty day free trial BTW.

Mark

[omarsmak30 4,068]

On 11/3/2022 at 4:08 PM, Rusty said:

Out of interest, if I was to get a new SSD for MSFS can one simply copy and paste over (assuming I renamed the directory to the original one) or would a full reinstall be required?

If you mean Community folder, yes copy paste done. You can use add on linker which makes this easy to manage.

[Rusty 11]

On 11/5/2022 at 2:32 AM, omarsmak30 said:

If you mean Community folder, yes copy paste done. You can use add on linker which makes this easy to manage.

Thanks Omar! I will surely look into this, perhaps PM you at a later stage.