When a new application is installed on your PC there are quite a few things the installer will do. Apart from copying all the necessary files, update file associations and other registry settings, it also hides an uninstaller (usually) on your PC so when it comes to removing all the applications you can run the uninstaller to remove it properly.
Those uninstallers can be triggered from Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features. But if you want to find out where they are located on your Windows machine that could be a mystery.
If you want to find where are all the uninstaller located on your Windows PC that’s the tricky part. There are two registries you can check.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
For example, we can find where VLC media player’s uninstaller is located by examing the “UninstallString” entry value.
If you look closely not all application you have can be found under this registry key. Some application’s uninstaller is hidden under this registry location instead.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Don’t get fooled by the registry location name, Wow6432Node can be only found for 64-bit Windows OS. A majority of the application here are however 32-bit. This is because this is a place to store information on 32-bit applications that run on a 64-bit version of Windows.
If exam further into each application’s entry, you will find most of their “UninstallerString” have values that are targetted in C:\Program Files (x86) under. (a dedicated Program Files for 32-bit applications)
That’s it if you ever wonder where are all the uninstaller located when you trigger uninstall from the control panel. They can be found at the above two locations.