[Siren]

need a cleaner uninstaller than Mac's easy drag and drop uninstalls, cause that only gets rid of whats in the specific folder and not its linked files else where on the HDD ...
over time junk builds up in your settings/preference folders ... old files from programs that are long gone, etc ...

is there an easy way to go through your preference folders/setting folders to delete unneccesary/left over junk from old installs (that you have already uninstalled) ...

I am asking because today I found out that some of my problems I was experiencing was caused by several old preference files that should've been deleted ...

or is it just easier to do a complete wipe and install?
how do you do a fresh format and reinstall?

(on the side ... i need to uninstall warcraft III (the latest patch doesn't work ... i want to try uninstalling, then installing and then patching ... are games installed exclusively in their folder? should I just drag and drop? when I insert the install disc, the only option is to install the game .. but only i already have it installed, can it not detect that?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Siren:
need a cleaner uninstaller than Mac's easy drag and drop uninstalls, cause that only gets rid of whats in the specific folder and not its linked files else where on the HDD ...

Files which drag onto the hard drive do not spew stuff all over the hard drive; there are no "linked files" to delete.

Stuff which uses an actual installer program may be a different story. However, usually you can cleanly uninstall an app by using the same program that installed it.

over time junk builds up in your settings/preference folders ... old files from programs that are long gone, etc ...

These are nothing more than files on disk. Unlike the Windows Registry, where there's just one big database that anything can corrupt, these are inert files. The only way they could harm you is if they somehow filled up your disk, and under normal use it would take years for them to even total one megabyte.

I am asking because today I found out that some of my problems I was experiencing was caused by several old preference files that should've been deleted ...

Really? Which files were these?

This is an honest question. It should be completely impossible for old preferences files to corrupt the system; they're just files on disk. If these old files were causing trouble with your system, then there is something larger at work and we need to find out what.

[Siren]

I use a logitech mx700 keyboard ... and I downloaded the mac drivers, i installed them and something weird start occuring (everytime i move the mouse, iMovie would open)
so I uninstalled and installed usboverdrive
then i was having problems (drag and dropping, and highlighting files/text) and so I just randomly browsed around the HD and found the preferences folder, then looking through that I found a few logitech files .. so I trashed those, and mouse behaved better ... but still sometimes I have the drag/drop/highlight problems

I guess this is a rare case ...
thanks for clearing things up.

[sushiism]

drivers and applications are two totally different things, some xml file or whatever holding a few window sizes and preferences of an application wouldn't cause something that