The Windows 95 Question

The impending shipment of Microsoft's Windows 95 and its different ways of handling applications create some interesting questions and implications for the future of uninstall utilities. Windows 95 will come with a registry, a centralized database of application requirements and file locations. This eliminates the need for WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI, and separate application-specific INI files, but only for Windows 95 native applications. In addition, to be able to use the Windows 95 logo, software developers must provide each application with its own uninstall option.

At first glance, these Windows 95 realities would appear to spell the end of separate utilities that remove Windows applications. But the picture is more complicated than that. For one, n ot everyone will move from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 immediately. More important, because widespread availability of Windows 95 applications will take a while, most Windows 95 converts will run a combination of Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 applications under Windows 95. And for backward compatibility, all Windows 3.1 applications still require the usual array of Windows 3.1 INI files.

Although the Windows 95 registry will eliminate many removal problems with native Windows 95 applications, the registry still doesn't track complex interdependencies among application files. And unless the required Windows 95 application-uninstall option is carefully designed, it could be inefficient or possibly delete files that are required by other applications (e.g., DLLs). The bottom line? Windows 95 is likely to make uninstallers as important, if not even more so, in the long run. That fact has been tacitly underlined by Microsoft: The Windows 95 registry contains an entry that lets you specify an application to use f or uninstalling Windows 95 applications, such as the uninstallers covered here.

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Round 'Em Up, Registry

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Windows 95's registry corrals application parameters in a central database.