No Opto, I don't plan to un-install PD.
The reason I asked about an uninstall process for PD is because an editor I used for years also leaves fingerprints everywhere. With that editor, the uninstall process that worked with corrupted things including registry entries was:
1. do a windows uninstall. This is the only step the manual prescribed, and it turned out in practice to be - as I said initially in this post - woefully inadequate because of all the fingerprints remaining in the system. The windows process simply runs the uninstall log, and application vendors are notoriously slack in creating entries for this: they are much more motivated to get their product installed, than in ways to remove it.
The extra steps that I and others found essential for uninstall of that other editor are, in sequence
2. run the program clean-up tool - the one the developers use to get a usable PC back when testing beta code that's crashed and burned. It took a bit of persuasion from them to release that initially, but there wasn't any other way short of a complete system re-build - not something anyone does without a lot of motivation. And the tool brute force removes the install msi files, all the add-on plug-ins etc, and creates a log file for review later.
3. delete all the program files and folders using windows explorer.
4. run a PC and regstry cleaner like Cclean - first to remove the temporary and deleted files, and then to do a registry clean - to match the registry to what is actually on the stortage drives. Consider this as a method of mtaching the index to the contents of a book: if the index (the registry) says a topic should be on a specific page (storage location), check that it is, log those that are not. And then remove the broken links. Even after the first 3 steps, this cleaner check usually found several hundred broken entries in the displayed log. Fix them all.
And even after all that, over 7 years of software use,upgrades and deleted versions, there were still nearly 1000 registry entries (keys, and data for keys) for that editor found in the registry using a scanning program like Regscanner. That sort of behaviour really screwed my migration to windows10 4 months ago; I spent 6 months unsuccessfully trying to solve it, eventually gave it up: and it's the single major reason I changed to using PD18.
So, having learned a fair bit about PD, and no doubt a lot still to learn, and with a new version out, it was time to ask the uninstall question. And the answers I've gotten so far suggest that PD is like that other editor I left behind; fingerprints everywhere, needing a good uninstall process and tools to get it done properly. Without having to re-build a PC just to do it. And it looks like Cyberlink hasn't addressed the issue . . . . .
Postscript edit
As an indicator of the size of there registry "problem", I have only PD18 ultimate installed on the PC, using a custom location for the application files. Running a registry scan with RegScanner.exe, using a text string of "PowerDirector" a the search key, there were 7,867 entries found.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at Oct 28. 2020 19:13