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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Computer Still Seems a Bit Slow After Norton Uninstall

kylealexander - Aug 7, 2005 - 5:10 pm

As I've read, to uninstall an application you simply drag the application and its components from the applications folder into the trash. However, I was wondering why my friend's ibook will uninstall app. preferences as well as receipts when doing this (a little pop up displays progress when dragging an app to the trash) and my powerbook will not. I called apple about this today (as I thought my OS was acting up) and they said that ibooks use a different form of OS X than powerbooks but we both use the latest version of Tiger. Is there anyway I can get my powerbook to do this so I don't have to manually find every related file and delete it when uninstalling an application? I have uninstalled some of the bundeled software that came with my powerbook just by dragging the apps and conversely their receipts and prefences into the trash - but does apple make an uninstaller for them?

Secondly I downloaded the symantec uninstaller to get rid of the troublesome Norton Antivirus from my computer but Start up and general use still seem somewhat slow and limited by the RAM that was allocated to Norton. Is this possible or am I just imagining things? If there is some way to check this could you please give me instructions as I am fairly new and intimidated by mac.

I appreciate the help, and thank you for your time.

DeltaMac - Aug 7, 2005 - 5:25 pm

Your friend has some utility installed that will provide this info, as the MacOS does not do this on its own. You would have to ask your friend what he has installed, but it's really not needed, as only a few apps need uninstallers (Norton is one, and even then can require a manual removal of some of its component). There's some more info on that at the Symantec wen site.
98% of the software used with a Mac does not need any extra help, outside of the hints that you mentioned - the main result of not having a registry (the worst component of Windows, IMHO)
So, almost all of Mac apps keep all parts inside the .app package, and deleting that is usually good enough, although you can hunt down the pref files if you want to do that.
Repair your permissions (with Disk Utility)
Run one of the maintenance utilities that you can download, such as OnyX, or YASU, or Maintain. The main part of these utilities, is the easy deletion of the various cache files on your system, and running the periodic maintenance scripts, which are made easy with these (and other) OS X utilities. You can find these at versiontracker.com.
Let me know how it goes.
- Dale

kylealexander - Aug 7, 2005 - 9:46 pm

Hey Dale,

Thanks for the verification on all of my application questions as well as providing me with useful info. As a new mac user I just wanted to make sure that I was doing things the right way. That's strange about my friends iBook - I'll have to look into it more.

I verified and then repaired permissions using Disk Utility and it found a few items to repaired which has already made an improvement. I was unable to find the programs at the website you listed but I will try looking for them in other places tomorrow and let you know what happens.

Thank you again for quick and informative response.

Kyle.

DeltaMac - Aug 7, 2005 - 10:05 pm

Here's the three that I mentioned, just a simple search at the versiontracker page for each:
YASU - http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21674
OnyX - http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20070
Maintain - http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14195

These are not the only ones, there's about 20 others with various features, additions, or just a different look. These are just some that I use and like.

YASU, I think, would be a good one for you, just does a couple of things, and does them well, and simply. You really don't need to do this more than once a month or so.
- Dale

kylealexander - Aug 13, 2005 - 9:22 am

Dale,

I must apologize for the late response as I've been out of town working all week. I've downloaded YASU and am running it right now. Thank you so much for you help, it's made taking on Mac OS X as a newbie a lot easier.