How do I get rid of Easy CD Creator 5?

[ViPER1313]

seriously though, all win boxes should have a reformat and reinstall every couple years.

I call BS. Currently I have a Windows 98 SE / 2000 dual boot setup. The Windows 98 install was originally a Win95 OSR2 setup. It survived 4 motherboard changes, 3 video cards, 1 virus, being installed on 3 different HD's, and tons of other system config changes. It is as stable as the day it was installed, and I have a list of installed programs that takes 1 min to scroll down. I benchmarked it (application loading times & memory consumption) against a fresh Win98 install on a separate HD and found the differences negligible.

Speed and stability are only affected when you have tons of unnecessary processes, old drivers and other BS that gets loaded into memory at system startup. If you are careful about what you install and patch/update your system you will rarely run into a problem.

Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and go to Task Manager, then to the processes tab - How many processes do you have running right now? With AIM, Folding@Home, Firefox, a MS toolbar for Office 2000, digital camera drivers and a virus scanner running, I am at 30 processes. If I close all but the virus scanner I am down to 20-23. My 2000 install will run stable for weeks at a time and it is well over 2 years old.

Tips for a stable system:

-Install later revisions of device drivers. Most instability problems stem from poor device drivers. Update your BIOS, video card drivers, audio drivers, EVERYTHING. Don't forget motherboard drivers to replace the Microsoft defaults.
-Insure stable hardware with a program such as Memtest86. If you receive errors, your hardware is not stable, making it impossible to have stable applications.
-Make sure your system cooling is adequate. Keeping a laptop on top of a stack of papers or allowing a 1/4in of dust to collect on your CPU fan can cause an unstable system.

To insure a fast and safe system:

-Scan for spyware with AdAware and Spybot S&D monthly
-Use a 3rd party browser (Firefox, Mozilla, Opera)
-Keep memory resident programs to a minimum using a program such as Spybot, MsConfig or Customizer XP
-Pay attention to what you install
-Keep a fixed size swap file (1gb should do in most cases)
-Defrag every once in a while (at least every couple of months)
-Keep your virus scanner up to date
-Install all patches from Microsoft
-Make sure software is uninstalled correctly and completely.