Removing Visual Studio Bloatware

Visual Studio, especially the newer versions, carry a lot of bloatware. Stuff we do not need… AT ALL. Threads on forums and requests through Microsoft Connect go completely unheeded (see this link). In such cases, the developer is left to fend for themselves.

Konstantin Erman from the above Connect thread has posted an excellent tool on CodePlex to work around this issue. The tool is called “Total Uninstaller” and does a fantastic job of things. Am a big fan!

To use the tool, all one needs to do is to download the file from the CodePlex page. You get a .ZIP file. Unzip all files into any folder on your system. Open the “TotalUninstaller.exe.config”. It contains a section called “ProductsToUninstall“. Add/modify the keys under this section to reflect the items you want gone.

WARNING! Be careful as this tool will uninstall ANY installed products and not just stuff related to Visual Studio!!!

Before running the uninstall command, open an elevated command prompt, CD to the folder where you unzipped the tool’s files and run:

X:\Tools\> TotalUninstaller /ListAll >> InstalledItems.txt

This will cause the tool to generate a listing of all products – just product names and their GUIDs – and save the same into the “InstalledItems.txt” file. Now open the text file in Notepad and search through it for the items you want to delete.

In the TotalUninstaller.exe.config file, under ProductsToUninstall, add new rows as follows:

<add key="<SEQ>" value="<Name of Product or search string>" />

The value for key (<SEQ>) should be a sequential whole number (1,2,3..). Do not leave any gaps in the numeric sequence! The value for value (Name of product or search string) should be the name of the product in full as per the listing in the InstalledItems.txt file, or any part of the name. You should be careful of using common words here or words that may appear in other installed products that you DO NOT want the tool to uninstall.

Here is my list:

<ProductsToUninstall>
    <add key="1" value="Advertising"/>
    <add key="2" value="Windows Phone"/>
    <add key="3" value="FSharp"/>
    <add key="4" value="Visual F#"/>
    <add key="5" value="LightSwitch"/>
    <add key="6" value="Workflow"/>
    <add key="7" value="Blend for Visual Studio SDK"/>
    <add key="8" value="Windows Library for JavaScript"/>
    <add key="9" value="Desktop SDK" />
    <add key="10" value="Windows Store App" />
    <add key="11" value="XAML" />
    <add key="12" value="Azure" />
    <add key="13" value="Mobile" />
    <add key="14" value="Blend" />
    <add key="15" value="Application Insights" />
    <add key="16" value="Release Management" />
</ProductsToUninstall>

Once you have entered all the items you want deleted, save the .config file, from the same elevated prompt, run:

X:\Tools\> TotalUninstaller /uninstall

And that’s it! Watch the tool quickly invoke each uninstaller and banish the product to bit oblivion! Since the tool uses a .config file to store the names, you do not need to remember the settings or command-line switches or other trickery. Just keep the .config file in a safe place and run the tool every time after you install, update or repair your Visual Studio installation.

Happy uninstalling!