“Alex [Jordache] and I are very excited about the release of the latest version of PDF Power Brand, viral marketing and list building software”, said Blackburn. “Alex had been working for me as a freelance coder for several years before we teamed up on this project in late 2008. He is an excellent php coder and project development manager”.

“The truth is, I was really struggling before I teamed up with Alex. Unfortunately, the app did not work well on low ram Vista systems and with more and more people wanting to use the application on Vista operating systems every day, it was becoming a serious problem. I had lost touch with the original software engineer and every engineer I hired could not fix the problems. Maybe it’s because Vista got better, or maybe it is because Alex is a genius. All I know is, we now have fully tested and working software again and I am confident that as a team we will be able to handle any future issues”.

“The app was a mess!” said Jordache, “Rather than trying to work around all the inherent bugs, I decided to start again from scratch, the original code was C++ we started again in Delphi. Actually, most of the credit for coding the software has to go to my very capable friend Acruc. I have known Acruc for 7 years now and I knew he would be the right man for the job. Hiring Acruc gave me more time to work on all the features for members that Dan wanted to implement.

Blackburn interjects, “Alex is an incredible php coder - I’ve always know that. Everything I asked him to make happen, he was able to do. As well as redeveloping the software in a more up to date programming language, Alex coded some highly effective viral marketing benefits into the PDF Power Brand web site and made all my ideas become real. I think the one most important aspect of bringing a software application to market is good communication between the developers and the marketers. I handle the marketing side and Alex handles the techie stuff. We make a great team!”

When asked to go into details about some of the benefits, Blackburn explained that he simply could not do so without talking to me for longer than the time we had available, and suggests that anyone who is interested in knowing more should subscribe to the PDF Power Brand blog or call him at the number given below.

For more details, call:
UK: 020 8144 2865
US: (630) 687-1378
International, +44 20 8144 2865

Or visit the PDF Power Brand Blog

The biggest problem with this was that the program might create additional files in other folders.  Typically, an INI file containing settings, which would be stored in the Windows folder.  When the program was deleted from the disk, these additional files were never removed.  After a period of time, PCs were filled with unused, orphaned files, which just wasted disk space.  Thta might not seem like too much of a problem, but when you consider that hard disks were expensive and of quite low capacity (20Mb is a typical example), computers soon began to run out of disk space.

Microsoft recognised this problem and created the Registry in which settings could be stored, and standard installers such as InstallShield appeared on the market.

InstallShield was smart enough to keep a log of files that had been installed, and would therefore know what to uninstall later.  Used properly, the programmer would also tell InstallShield what additional files the program might create at run-time, so they could also be deleted.

Microsoft’s MSI does very much the same thing as InstallShield.

So if we have these standardised installers that are clever enough to uninstall everything, what is the problem?  Basically, programmers are still not using them correctly.

I recently installed a demonstrattion version of ParetoLogic Data Recovery.  The demo turned out to be pretty useless - it would find deleted files, but wouldn’t undelete them.  You have to buy the full version for that, of course.

So I uninstalled the program using the correct Uninstall procedure from the Windows Control Panel.

The next day, my PC popped up a message saying that it couldn’t find a file which was part of the ParetoLogic software.  I searched the Registry for references to that file and there was nothing there.  Very mysterious.

Every day since then, it has popped up the same message.  This was becoming somewhat annoying, so I searched the entire disk for “ParetoLogic”.

Bingo!  It turns out that this program had added itself to the Windows Task Scheduler, but the uninstall procedure had not removed it.  So every time that scheduled task time arose, it couldn’t find the uninstalled program, hence the error message.

As a programmer myself, I knew what to do to locate and rectify the problem, but the average PC user wouldn’t.

This is just one example.  There are numerous other programs out there which are as equally untidy when it comes to uninstallation.

So come on software engineers, when you test your software, install it on a clean machine, then uninstall it, then search the hard disk and the Registry for any residue.  Then fix your uninstallers.  It’s not difficult - it just takes a little time, but it makes all the difference.

ParetoLogic have now lost a potential customer.  Don’t lose yours!