April 19, 2014

Installing/Uninstalling software using REGSHOT and CHKUNIN

When installing a program, rather than just running the INSTALL.EXE, 
ABC.EXE or whatever it is called and not knowing what has been changed 
or added to your system, use REGSHOT and CHKUNIN.
If you are using a .ZIP file, you will have to unzip it first.

Installing with REGSHOT:

 1- Start REGSHOT
	The first time you start REGSHOT, you may have to change a couple 
	of settings.
	a) To use CHKUNIN with REGSHOT, you MUST produce TEXT files with
	   REGSHOT. Click on the button beside "Plain TXT" if it is not
           already checked. You also MUST produce the TEXT files in 
           ENGLISH, or CHKUNIN will not work.
	b) Click on the box in front of "Scan dir1[;dir2...]" to
	   scan folders as well as the registry.
	c) Click on the button with 3 dots after the "Output path:" box to
           select a folder for the compare files, or type in the name.
        d) If you don't want to see the list of files whose size has not
           changed, click on the "Don't show..." box.

 2- For complete "how-to" documentation, read "REGSHOT readme.txt".
 3- CLICK "1st Shot" BUTTON and select an option.
 4- REGSHOT will now take a snapshot of your system. 
 5- Run the install program.
 6- In the REGSHOT window, CLICK "2nd Shot" BUTTON and select an option.
    REGSHOT will now take another snapshot of your system.
 7- Type a name for the install in the "Compare filename in Output path:" 
    box, then click the Compare button.
 8- When the compare is finished, REGSHOT will open a window showing you all
    the changes made to your system by the install. You can browse through
    it or just click the "Close" button to close the window.
 9- Click on the "Quit" button to exit REGSHOT.


If you decide to uninstall the program:

 1- Run "Add/Remove Programs" if the program does not have an 
    uninstall option.
    in Windows 7...Start/Settings/Control Panel/???
    In Windows 8... move the mouse pointer to the bottom left of the screen
    and RIGHT-CLICK. Left-click on Control Panel. Left-click on 
    "Programs and Features".
 2- Select the program you want to uninstall and REMOVE it.
 3- Go to the folder where you saved the file in step 7 of the install
    steps. 
 4- Select the file name and pass it to CHKUNIN. If you added CHKUNIN to 
    your "Send To" or "Open with" list, right-click on the filename and 
    then select CHKUNIN [MFC Application].
 5- CHKUNIN will produce 2-4 files.. a ".BAT" file, a ".REG" file,
    and an "_mods.reg" file. The 4th file reports some errors.
 6- If you are lucky, the uninstall deleted everything it added to your
    system. If so, you can delete the ".BAT" and ".REG" files.
 7- If there are still registry entries left around, the ".REG" file will
    be in the same folder as the file in step 7 of the install steps.
    Browse through this file and make sure you really want to delete all
    the entries from the registry. (You may have installed more than one
    program..)
    Right-click on the ".REG" file and use "regedit" to merge it with the         registry. 
    This should remove the entries, although you may have to run
    CHKUNIN more than once. 
    Entries in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet..." may have to
    be deleted manually.
 8- If there are folders or files left around, the ".BAT" file will
    be in the same folder as the file in step 7 of the install steps.
    Browse through this file and make sure you really want to delete all
    of them. (You may have installed more than one program..)
    Double Left-click on the ".BAT" file. This should remove the files.
    Also, you may have to run with Administrator authority.
    NOTE... CHKUNIN checks up to 10 folders that have been added to your
            system for duplicates or sub-folders. If more than 10 folders
            were created, you will have to run CHKUNIN more than once.
 9- You may want to go back to step 4 above and run CHKUNIN more than 
    once, as I have found that it sometimes takes more than one run to
    delete all the registry entries.
10- You can now delete all the files created by REGSHOT and CHKUNIN in the 
    "Installed" folder for the program you installed/uninstalled.


