NirSoft has released UninstallView (32-bit here), a portable tool which collects and displays information on your stored applications.

Don’t be fooled by the name. UninstallView isn’t trying to compete with GeekUninstaller and has no program-removing abilities, it’s just a better version of the standard Windows Add/ Remove Programs applet.

UninstallView’s first advantage is the vast amount of data it displays about each application: name, version, install date, Registry time (the date and time the Registry key of the software was modified), install location, the regular and quiet uninstall strings, the About, Help and Update URLs (if provided), the location of the installer files, the name of the installer, the estimated install size, language, the uninstall Registry key and more.

You won’t see all of these in every case, as the precise details vary between installers and installer types, but you will see a lot more than Windows provides by default.

Loads of data, sortable table, tiny and portable application? Must be another NirSoft app

The program can access other data sources, too. It’s able to scan and list the applications installed by all users on the local system, as long as you have read access to their profiles (try running the program elevated). It can display installed applications on remote computers where you have admin access. It can read data from external drives – a backup of another PC, say – or even extract a historical “installed programs” list from a Windows shadow copy.

Right-clicking any application displays options to run the regular uninstall command, to uninstall it silently (you shouldn’t see any prompts) or to change its installation (the equivalent of selecting “Modify” in the regular Windows applet).

Select “Allow uninstallation of multiple items” and you’ll be able to select and uninstall several items at once. This increases the chance of problems if the uninstallers clash, but it’s available if you want to try it.

An “Open Uninstall item in Regedit” option should open the relevant entry in the Registry editor. This didn’t work for us all the time, but when it did it helped us find out more about the application.

The program can also uninstall software on remote network computers. This takes a little extra work as you have to download Sysinternals’ PsExec separately, but it’s not difficult. All you have to do is place PsExec in the same folder as UninstallView, and when you launch the program its remote uninstall options will become available.

There are loads of options, including the ability to display less information in exchange for faster speeds, and the program can also export your stored program list as a text or HTML report for study later.

UninstallView (32-bit here) is a free program for Windows XP and later.