How to know what Programs to Remove?

[tomsxp1]

Hello, How can a person tell which Programs can be removed when they don't know what the programs are, i have no idea what alot of them are and there is one (would you believe called PIG PEN) Is there a way of removing them but backing them up before incase there is a mistake and I need to put them back?

 

[Lonman]

Very ambiguous question. What programs exactly, and are you referring to just programs you've installed, or are you referring to stopping services as well? The 'pig pen' is definantly not a native XP program, so i'm sure you can lose that no problem. You can create a restore point before you start uninstalling things and if you run into problems you can roll your machine back to before you did the uninstall(s) which 'should' put things back ok.

 

[Qumahlin]

lol notice the 'should' in lonman's post...I've yet to have any probs with restore...but I always try and do a backup of anything important first, and harddrives are getting cheaper nowadays! I saw a 60 gig for 119 bucks at bestbuy...I just had to get it for some extra storage

 

[tomsxp1]

Lonman, I was refering to the ADD/REMOVE Programs, there is alot in there and most of them, i have no idea where they came from or what they are, I was trying to take a Picture of them with the print screen key but it did not work for some reason! There must be a way of finding out what these programs are? I never could get System restore working yet, it is enabled but I am thinking you have to Create a Restore Point first, then it should work, do you know if thats true?

 

[Lonman]

System Restore is active by default and should be creating daily checkpoints by itself. One of these mystery programs may have messed it up.

When you hit your print screen button, then open up paint> edit> paste... nothing is being saved to your clipboard and putting it in paint (or another photo editor) for you?