Hi ,
I have uninstalled the atom from control panel and deleted the folders in
users/abc/.atom folder
users/abc/appdata/local/atom folder
When i installed ATOM , i found the packages installed and all those settings.
How to Complete Uninstalled ATOM in Windows ?
If you deleted the entire contents (not just the folders within) of Users\abc\\.atom that should have taken care of any packages and settings.
does it “automagically” remove registry entries also?, I dont think so, you have to manually go in and remote nasty shell ext entries … (at least)
product that does not have uninstaller IMHO, is not worst installing.
I think the issue is that the Uninstaller should should delete the contents of Users\abc\\.atom.
A quick recap about what is missing from this low-quality uninstallation procedure (Atom v1.3.1):
That’s a lot! Shame on you GitHub for shipping this. Out of curiosity, do you care about your users?
I uninstalled Atom to reinstall it from scratch (as spell checking isn’t working, but reinstalling didn’t fix that).
I used the uninstall entry point in the installed application list of Windows.
I had to remove manually the three folders I know:
C:\Users\<user name>\.atom folder (settings, packages…).C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\atom (application itself)C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Atom folder (for cache?)The first one was problematic because npm created very long paths (deep dependencies of packages) and Windows Explorer refused to remove them, and rm -rf (from UnxUtils) was hung on them.
I solved this by taking the node_modules folder of the problematic packages and moving them (D’n’D in Explorer) to the .atom folder. Not an obvious move for the uninitiated…
Install and uninstall processes should be improved.
I don’t appreciate that Atom doesn’t ask anything at installation: I don’t want a desktop icon, I might not want a start menu icon, I might want to choose an installation folder to group with other softwares. Although I understand that installing in Program Files is problematic for updates…
And uninstalling should, at least optionally, clean up everything.
Unfortunately the squirrel installer was chosen in the beginning for windows installs and it sucks out loud. Before they used chocolatey which was even worse. I’ve posted issues on this at the squirrel repo with no response. I assume the atom/atom repo has an issue to ask for switching to another installer. If not you should post one.
Not asking questions during installation is a specific choice by the Squirrel team. There is an Issue tracking options for the installer here:
The general gist of things is that what most people want as installer options will probably be placed somewhere in the Settings View so they can be turned on or off or changed at any time, rather than simply at installation. So the installer will just install everything with the defaults and then options can be configured from inside Atom once it is installed.
As for uninstallation, I haven’t worked on Windows for about four years now … but when I did last leaving configuration files and some registry entries behind on uninstallation was very common practice. I agree that the uninstaller should remove more than it does, like any start menu or desktop icons and file associations. If there are not bugs already open for those please open them and post links to the Issues you open here in this topic so they can be tracked.
Registry (Source)
The three locations are;
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shell
At the very least, the context menu entry needs to be removed, as it leaves a clickable and error-producing entry there, on every file.
Hi, you can remove folder (.atom) in documents folder if you rename almost every folder. First of all you must delete all the folders you can, go at the end of “tree”, then you start to rename the folders to 1, and you can delete all the stuff in there. It works for me, a little work, but is effective.
Hope it helps someone, and i’m sorry for my English.
I also agree that not being able to completely automatically uninstall program is very inconsiderate for the user, bearing in mind how modern application Atom is. That could be maybe understood in the middle of last decade.
Also agree that installation procedure is lacking in any kind of info of whats going on, where programi will be installed, options to choose what to do (start menu, desktop icons), or just a quick check “Press Start to install Atom”. Maybe the user accidentally clicked installer, he wanted to install it later but there it goes, no way of stopping. And after he can’t easily remove program with one click, because everything (folders, registery) has to be cleaned manually.
It appears to me that the folder thing is still a problem, but when I looked through the hkeys, there’s no longer context menu entries after uninstall by deleting those folders after uninstalling using cCleaner uninstall tool.
Btw standard windows uninstaller is to have it open a GUI which asks
"are you sure?" Y/N
And
"Keep preferences and settings files?" Y/N
Am I correct to assume that even with the latest version, Atom still leaves around trash in the registry and the .atom folder with preferences when trying to uninstall it completely?
I have been avoiding using Atom because of this particularity given in case something goes wrong, a simple reinstall does not tend to resolve the problem as result of these things being left upon uninstalling Atom.
Most of the time, file problems can be resolved by renaming the .atom folder rather than performing a complete reinstall. This seems preferable to me.
Thanks for the tips! I had tried to use Atom for more than one year, but I am full of this “not responding” issue. Goodbye, Atom!
