There’s a fundamental flaw with most program uninstallers – they often remove the bare minimum required to stop said program working, leaving behind a raft of redundant files and unwanted Registry entries to clutter up your PC. In isolation these have little effect, but over time the digital detritus can build up to bring your system to its knees.

System cleaning tools are the obvious solution here, but they’re often throwing out the baby with the bathwater, deleting legitimate files and Registry entries to introduce more problems than they solve. A better solution is to take full control over the program uninstall process with Revo Uninstaller Free. This handy tool scours the Registry and your hard drive for leftover entries after removing a program, letting you verify that the entries aren’t needed in their proper context before removing them. It’s simple and completely free to use, neater and safer than relying on a Registry cleaning tool and will extend the life of your Windows installation. What’s not to like?

There’s also a commercial Pro version if you want more features, such as even more thorough cleaning tools and the ability to forcibly remove installations that won’t go quietly. Before shelling out for this latter feature, however, check out IObit Uninstaller, which is free and offers something similar. Then there’s ZSoft Uninstaller, which goes even further and can be used to analyse your system prior to installing a program, making it capable of removing said application more thoroughly still. One final freebie to check out is AppRemover, which is geared specifically towards thoroughly removing security software from your PC.

Mac users looking jealously on shouldn’t fret – there are a couple of freebie equivalents for Mac OS X too in the form of AppCleaner and TrashMe.