After uninstalling Windows Brave, so many folders and registry keys were not deleted as required by Microsoft.

[longtimedeveloper]

Description

After uninstalling Brave, so many folders and registry keys were not deleted as required by Microsoft.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Brave on Windows 10
2. Use Brave
3. Uninstall Brave

Actual result:

So many folders and registry keys were not deleted as required by Microsoft.

Expected result:

All Brave folders on my computer would be removed.
All Brave registry entries on my computer would be removed.

Reproduces how often:

ALWAYS

Brave version (brave://version info)

Latest Windows version

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? YES

[rebron]

cc: @mherrmann

[longtimedeveloper]

@rebron thank you!

[mherrmann]

I'm aware of the following folders "sticking around" when you select "Also remove your browsing data?" in the uninstaller:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\BraveSoftware\Update. This should disappear by itself after a while. When Brave Update realizes that the browser is no longer installed, it uninstalls itself.
• C:\Program Files (x86)\BraveSoftware\Temp. This sticks around and should probably be removed.
• C:\Program Files (x86)\BraveSoftware\CrashReports. This should disappear after this PR, with Brave 1.64.x.

Also, the following registry key sticks around:

• Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\BraveSoftware\Update

Did I miss anything @longtimedeveloper?

[longtimedeveloper]

@mherrmann there were many more registry keys I had to remove manually. Took over 30 minutes to get them all. Search for brave.

There were many more directories I removed from appdata\local and appdata\roaming

When I look at the Services, two are still listed. see the below image. My registry no longer as any brave it. However, these two are still listed in the Services. No way to remove these.

[longtimedeveloper]

@mherrmann thank you for your investigation.

[mherrmann]

@longtimedeveloper this appears to me then like something went wrong when you uninstalled. The Brave Update Service may stick around for a few hours after you uninstall Brave. But the Vpn Wireguard Service should disappear immediately.

[longtimedeveloper]

@mherrmann no errors were reported during the uninstall.

[mherrmann]

@longtimedeveloper could it be that you had two copies of Brave? Brave can be installed per-user (in %LOCALAPPDATA%) and system-wide (in C:\Program Files). It almost sounds to me like you had a per-user copy of Brave, which you uninstalled, but the system-wide copy remained.

[longtimedeveloper]

@mherrmann no. One install.

[mherrmann]

@longtimedeveloper I see. Does the problem happen again when you re-install Brave, and then uninstall again?

[longtimedeveloper]

@mherrmann sorry, I don't want to reinstall and go through this again.

[ilyak83]

I just want to mention that this issue still exist. And It's even easy to reproduce it in any Windows Virtual Machine.