Advanced Uninstaller PRO: review

A user in the forums recently asked for a review of Advanced Uninstaller PRO. It’s currently ranked as the number one uninstaller on download.com.

After a weighty 22.2MB download, the installation screen contained the first unpleasant surprise. AVG Security Toolbar was preselected for installation, as was a change to the default homepage. Even after selecting “custom installation”, the same options were preselected. Unfortunately, installing toolbars, and preselecting their installation has become all too common with “free” applications.

setup

After installation was complete — with the toolbar and homepage options unselected, Advanced Uninstaller PRO starts quickly. Another unpleasant surprise was the interface. Some polite reviewers might call it unique. I’ll stick with ugly. Functional, but definitely not a clean or modern graphical user interface.

gui

How well does it work?
Since its main task is an uninstaller, we uninstalled stuff. After the application’s default uninstaller routine runs, Advanced Uninstaller PRO prompts to scan the hard drive and registry for "leftovers". This initial scan took 9 minutes on our test system, but it was much faster on subsequent scans. Oddly, uninstall info was listed twice for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of programs, so it had to be run twice to remove them both.

scan

Finally, when leftovers are found, it simply presents the results in a registry tree, leaving the user to select, and decide what to remove. Seems like a bad idea for most average users. Undo is option, but we didn’t test it.

registry

A look at other features of Advanced Uninstaller PRO reveal a registry cleaner, and duplicate file finder. We have consistently recommended against using any registry cleaner, as they simply don’t work and often introduce system errors. Duplicate file finders often delete unintended files if not used carefully. Many other options in Advanced Uninstaller PRO are simply links to Windows system settings.

Bottom line, there are better uninstall options available (Revo). I used the default Windows installer, to uninstall Advanced Uninstaller PRO.

Appearance = 2/5
Quality = 3/5
Ease-of-use = 2/5
Features = 3/5
Performance = 2/5
Value = 3/5
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Overall Rating: ★★½☆☆