Proper deletion of a program

[Aqua Paparazzi]

Hey Rick,

A simple question I think you can help with. I just "zeroed out" two new drives . I took your advice on preparing a drive for use and created a copy of Disk Utility to run this task simultaneously. Now that I am finished, should I simply drag that extra copy of Disk Utility to the trash? Somewhere I have recently read about changes in mac OS X that make it more important to "uninstall" a program instead of just trashing it. Any light you can shed on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Scott

[ricks]

I always just 'drugged' to the trash. And as far as I can tell the entire file is gone, including doing a look see at the volume in terminal. It appears that nothing got left behind. That said, I have never done an 'uninstall' unless the application in question came with an uninstaller.

Rick

[Aqua Paparazzi]

That makes perfect sense, thanks mate.

Scott

[unclemac]

Hey Rick: Can't you just open a second window in DU to perform a second function?

As for deleting DU, yeah, just drag to the trash. There is also likely a preference file, but it is innocuous.....and the same used by the remaining DU app.

[ricks]

Hey Rick: Can't you just open a second window in DU to perform a second function?.

Uhhh.... duh. Don't know. Can you? Could you with older OS revisions? My ignorance is hanging out for all to see

[rwm]

Uhhh.... duh. Don't know. Can you? Could you with older OS revisions? My ignorance is hanging out for all to see

I be to ignorant to even post or respond and not enough time/energy to research it. But enjoy watching the discussion.

[Damien]

The only time you might need to 'uninstall' is if your app installed a kernel extension (.kext file) Dragging to the trash works fine for everything else but would not remove a kext file. Not many apps install kext's though and all I have seen that do come with an uninstaller. Specialty drivers usually do (mouse, printers etc) USB Overdrive does as does Little Snitch.

[unclemac]

Open DU and do something (repair permissions), and then go to:

File > New Window

And then in the new window do something else.......like mount/unmount an external drive, a .dmg, etc.

Works for me in 10.6, pretty sure in 10.5 too.

[unclemac]

As for deleting apps, there are some good third party tools that will offer to dig out all related files. Agreed, most don't times these supporting files don't matter, but if you want to see all the prefs (user & global system), pref panes, application supports files and so on, they are great helpers.

Not needed for this question about a second instance of DU.

But fun tools anyway. Tinkertool System is fun, App Zapper is nice, and there is a funny little one called App Trap. Others too.....try one. Just by seeing the files and locations, you can learn lots about OS 10.

[cowboyonamac]

As for deleting apps, there are some good third party tools that will offer to dig out all related files. Agreed, most don't times these supporting files don't matter, but if you want to see all the prefs (user & global system), pref panes, application supports files and so on, they are great helpers.

Not needed for this question about a second instance of DU.

But fun tools anyway. Tinkertool System is fun, App Zapper is nice, and there is a funny little one called App Trap. Others too.....try one. Just by seeing the files and locations, you can learn lots about OS 10.

I use AppZapper.

It's pretty thorough.
If it can do a "clean" uninstall of Adobe Creative Suite apps, that's good enough for me.