Bulk Crap Uninstaller 5.0

Bulk Crap Uninstaller

Bulk Crap Uninstaller is a free (as in speech) program uninstaller. It excels at removing large amounts of applications with minimal user input. It can clean up leftovers, detect orphaned applications, run uninstallers according to premade lists, and much more. Even though BCU was made with IT pros in mind, by default it is so straight-forward that anyone can use it effortlessly!

Bulk Crap Uninstaller features:

Detect and uninstall Windows Store apps
Uninstall multiple items at once to speed up the process (with collision prevention)
Uninstall any number of applications in a single batch
Minimal user input is required during uninstallation
Can find and remove leftovers after uninstallation
Can uninstall some apps even if they don't have any uninstallers
Detects applications with damaged or missing uninstallers
Adds quiet uninstall options to some uninstallers, even if they do not support them by default
Uninstall lists for automation
Startup manager
Verification of uninstaller certificates
Fully portable, settings are saved to a single file

Bulk Crap Uninstaller 5.0 release notes:

Starting with this release, BCU will need Windows 7 or newer to run (if you get an error on startup in 7 / 2018R2 then try running Windows Update). If you want to use BCUninstaller on Vista or older, download the latest available 4.x release. This is because BCUninstaller is now fully in .NET 5.

The move was long overdue and finally got forced by GitHub switching to a new SSL encryption standard that is not supported by .NET 3.5, making it impossible to check for updates.

Because of being in .NET 5, BCUninstaller no longer is restricted to using only old and outdated libraries and APIs (it was stuck on .NET 3.5 before for backwards compatibility). This introduces some major improvements but also some drawbacks, most notably:

Since it's a very new framework it's not installed on many systems, but thankfully it's now possible to compile the application as "stand-alone", which means it includes everything needed to run, even if your system doesn't have .NET installed at all (no more prompts to install .NET Framework).
This stand-alone compilation is why the file size increased drastically - a good chunk of the framework is now bundled with BCU.
Thanks to the stand-alone compilation and the new runtime BCU now starts and runs faster (might be hard to notice without a fast SSD).
The stand-alone compilation forced me to include separate x64 and x86 builds. This can be fixed in the future by having only a x86 build, but a lot of code handling registy will have to be updated for that to work properly. Only the correct build for your system will be installed.
The portable version will have both builds and a launcher that will automatically start the correct version of BCU. You can remove the x86 build if you only service x64 systems and vice-versa to save some space.

Bulk Crap Uninstaller 5.0 changelog:

Converted to .NET 5, set up a new build pipeline
Added "Put PC to sleep when done" checkbox to the uninstallation progress window
Added "Tools > Create restore point" menu item
Added experimental DPI-aware mode (turn on in Settings > Misc, expect interface to look weird in some places) #226
Added option to never show post-update news popup (new check box in the said window)
Added switch to directly open Startup Manger #284
Changed file structure to make the root BCUninstaller directory cleaner
Changed system restore into a setting, if enabled then automatically run at start of uninstall #265
Cleaned up localized resources from unnecessary data
Clear caches after updating to a new version
Improved scoop output parsing to be more resilient #252
Fixed BCU shortcuts being detected as junk #262
Fixed checking for updates not working
Fixed GetChildProcesses not working on some systems
Fixed ManagementObjectSearcher exception if installed .NET is an ancient version
Fixed first start wizard being shown on top of additional settings window
Fixed marking config as corrupted too aggressively
Fixed normalizing filesystem paths improperly
Fixed not resetting config properly
Fixed some settings not using the right provider or not being roaming (settings got lost when updating)
Fixed sorting by size showing groups in wrong order #281
Fixed window title typo #269
Removed donate button from the status bar
Show open/save .bcul text in advanced filters toolbar
Updated manual with a better explanation of .bcul files #273
Updated uninstallation manual #211
Include all necessary projects in this repository, can now compile BCU easily from VS 2019
Use a new automation library