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Uninstalling Windows

Intended For
Windows Me
Windows 98
Windows 95
Windows comes with an uninstall utility that supposedly allows you to revert your system back to the previous version (assuming you didn't just install on a clean system). Uninstalling Windows from your system isn't the same as deleting a few files, or even removing an application, and it's not something you can do manually. If the uninstall feature is disabled (for any of the reasons listed below), you're pretty much out of luck.

  • If you reinstall Windows after the first installation (likely if Windows setup does something wrong), you won't be able to uninstall.

  • In order for this feature to work, you'll have to answer "yes" when asked if you want to save your system files during Windows setup, and you'll have to refrain from deleting those files after installation is over.

  • If you use Windows 98's Tune-Up Wizard to clean up your hard disk, the 67 megabytes of uninstall information will be deleted, and the Uninstall Windows 98 and Delete Windows 98 Uninstall information entries in the Add/Remove Programs panel will vanish.

  • If, before installing Windows 98, you installed Internet Explorer 4.0 on top of Windows 95, and then removed the uninstall files, the uninstall from Windows 98 back to Windows 95 might not work.


If any of the above have prevented easy uninstallation, the following may help:

  • Make sure you have a the Emergency floppy diskettes from both the old and new Windows installations.
  • Boot your computer with the old setup diskettes.
  • Run setup.
  • Reinstalling your old version of Windows onto a clean system (or at least into an empty directory) is the easiest way. However, you can try installing the old version directly over the new version (i.e. into the same directory), although, depending on your system, this may turn out to be a giant headache. On the other hand, installing into a new directory or cleaning out the old directory before reinstalling, will mean that you'll have to reinstall most (if not all) of your applications.

The best solution is to set up a dual boot system before you install; that way, you can test the new version of Windows before you comit to it. Here's how to do it (courtesy of David A. Karp and Windows Sources magazine).


Written by: Annoyances.org
Last updated: Sunday, August 5, 2001

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