Inspired (and frustrated) by last night’s battle with the application that would not die, I’ve been going through and cleaning up my Macbook. I’m prepared to do a complete fresh reinstall of the operating system if it comes down to it – but if I can avoid it, I will.
There’s something I’m looking for. Logic dictates that it MUST exist. It’s an application that will go through your hard drive and completely remove all traces of files that were associated with software that you have uninstalled.
Let me be clear: I’m not looking for something that will do a clean uninstall of programmes I have on my machine and would like to remove. I’ve had one of those for a while now.
What I’m looking for is something that will deal with files left behind by programmes I deleted long ago. Any ideas?
Right now:
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http://guides.macrumors.com/Uninstalling_Applications_in_Mac_OS_X
I’m fine with uninstalling apps. That’s not what I’m trying to do. Had that sorted out with AppTrap for some time now. In their rush to be helpful, people keep recommending App Zapper and similar, but missing the point of what I’m saying here.
What I’m trying to deal with are files left behind by programmes I removed BEFORE I was using something to do clean uninstalls. These are apps I deleted AGES ago. Can’t even remember what they were.
I want something that goes through my hard drive and thinks to itself “Well, he doesn’t need THIS file – he doesn’t even have the application it goes with installed.” – and then removes it.
Aha! The magic word was ‘orphan’. What I was looking to delete were ‘orphan’ files. Once I put that into Google, I quickly discovered something called App Delete – which, along with all of the other stuff that all the Uninstall app removal software does, also searches and destroys orphan files left behind by long-dead apps.
Does some other cool stuff too. Pretty good, actually.
And free(actually, I just opened it again, and it asked me for money).On the recurring AddressBookSync problem that I thought I’d solved yesterday, but which came back to haunt me today – the culprit was iSync. I have much better grounds for coming to that conclusion, so it’s what I’m going with… and I’ve deleted it from my system. Hopefully that won’t break anything else – but it doesn’t seem to have… yet.
Again, I’ve spoken too soon. AddressBookSync is back.
I’m going to sleep on this. I’m giving it one more day before I erase everything and start again with a clean operating system. I can’t get any work done with this slowing my computer right down, and me forever hunting for a solution.
And at last…
Resetting the Sync Services folder:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1627
My belief is now that the problem WAS iSync, but it was the sync to iTunes that was confusing it. Reinstalling iTunes threw up the problem again, and a bit of Googling found me the above link, I tried it – and not only did the problem seem to go away entirely, my iPhone sync was, for the first time ever, LIGHTNING fast – with no problems.
Off to bed now. Hopefully, things will be as I left them when I wake in the morning. Keep you posted…
And… we’re clean. I think it’s solved. Not only that, but my cleanout has made the machine much faster in every respect – and I finally got around to ditching out a whole bunch of stuff that I wasn’t using, and making comprehensive backups, just in case it was a fresh install I was after.
Uploading ALL of my photos to Flickr, which will take some time – and it’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages. The public ones can be found on my Gallery page.
I’m glad you fixed that problem. I can now boot up my Mac with confidence?
I think so. But I know a way to make it EVEN BETTER now.
And I know how to fix something if it gets broken. Well, one thing anyway.