oh my! liddo

Uninstall all that crap on windows and move them to a USB stick instead.

Introduction

The other day myself and I decided to slim down my Windows install doing the usual things, which usually involves uninstalling unused software and manually searching for any traces that the uninstaller has left behind. I am aware of tools such as “Revo Uninstaller” but even Revo miss out on a lot of things, mainly in the “AppData” folder and registry keys.

Having found myself doing this on a regular interval got me sick and tired, that’s when I thought of the idea of sticking to “portable” software as much as I can. Portable software seems to be marketed towards USB drives, but they’re also perfect for your normal drives if you want to keep things nice and clean. For me though, I am going to stick my software on the same USB drive that I have pretty much permanently plugged in to my computer for “ReadyBoost”.

There are a ton of non-portable programs that shouldn’t even be in a installer. I think a program should be at least 10MB in size before it would even consider a installer. Sadly, almost every program you download by default comes with one. There are nice people out there however, who provide both.

Method

The one disadvantage of using portable software are file associations. It is kind of annoying when you have to launch the program then click file then open, rather then just double clicking on the file you want to open. Luckily I found a program called “CAFE” which solves this problem.

First I got the following on to my USB stick:

• CAFE: The handy program that can set and unset file associations when I plug or unplug my USB stick.
• EjectUSB: Closes your programs and safely ejects your USB.
• PStart: Launches programs.

Add PStart to autorun.inf to automatically run when I insert my USB stick.

I added CAFE to PStart and set PStart to launch CAFE automatically when PStart starts.

I added EjectUSB to PStart and set EjectUSB to launch automatically when I close PStart.

My USB stick is now set up to launch PStart and set all the needed file associations when it is inserted. After I am done, I can simply close PStart and all programs that I launched from my USB stick will close and file associations on the computer will be restored automatically.

Next I went software hunting. I searched around to see if there are existing portable versions for programs I am currently using. Downloaded them and extracted them to my USB stick.

Now for the programs that don’t have portable versions, I consider alternatives. I download and try out some of alternatives. If I don’t like it, I can just simply delete the folder and try another one.

Once I got all the software I want on to my USB stick, I start uninstalling the equivalent software on my computer using Revo (portable of course!). I followed this up by a manual search and delete procedure to remove any traces.

That’s it, I’m done! Now I have barely any software installed on my computer! Now I am can take my programs with me!

Specifics

Here is a list of software I have on my USB stick:

• 7-Zip: Archive or extract just about anything.
• CCleaner: Removes temporary files and useless registry entries.
• Chromium: The best web browser out there.
• DOSBox: Runs DOS games, which are also on my USB stick. I love my DOS games.
• Everything: Searches your hard drives, really fast, like really really fast.
• foobar2000: Plays my music, my collection is too big for my USB stick sadly.
• ImgBurn: Burns discs.
• mIRC: Old IRC chat client. I still use IRC to chat.
• Notepad++: For editing code and editing this PHP-powered SQL-free website. I update posts by editing files manually.
• OpenOffice.org: I prefer OpenOffice.org ever since they decided that “ribbon” was the way to go. I hate ribbons.
• Pidgin: Use this only for MSN. I have been using this ever since they decided to stick advertising and bundle other software with their client.
• Process Explorer: I use this to kill stuff. Mainly processes.
• PuTTY: SSH client. All the awesome web-hosts use SSH nowadays.
• Revo Uninstaller: It uninstalls crap better.
• Skype: VoIP client. I haven’t used this in ages but its here if I need it.
• SMPlayer: A front end for Mplayer, my video player of choice. VLC sucks. MPC is better. MPlayer is best-est. I also replaced the default MPlayer with Kovensky’s MPlayer build.
• Sumatra PDF: PDF viewer. I hate acrobats.
• System Information: Display information about your computer and operating system. Sometimes I forget what my computer is.
• TeamViewer: Remote desktop client and server that’s easy to set up. My relatives are always asking me to fix their computers and I’m too lazy to visit them.
• TeraCopy: Copy or move files better and faster. Handy when I need to copy a lot of files.
• Tor Browser: Anonymous web browsing using the Tor network.
• WinSCP: Use to upload or download files from a web-server using SCP.
• XVI32: Hex editor for naughty editing of things.

Here is a list of programs that I have installed and that I wish could be made portable:

• Belvedere: Automatically cleans and organises files. Handy for my downloads folder.
• Dropbox: Syncs files across computers.
• iTunes: Plays music but I only use it to sync my iPhone/iPod and buy music.
• Photoshop: This program makes the pictures.
• Teamspeak: Voice chat with friends.

Conclusion

I am very happy with this set up. I also made PStart act like pseudo-Start by binding it to show when I press Windows+A and hide itself after I launch a something.