1Uninstalling Vim on Dos and MS-Windows. 2 3There are three ways to remove Vim: 4 51. With the GUI uninstaller. 6 This is only available when Vim was installed with the self-installing 7 executable. This has a minimal number of questions. It can delete 8 everything that was installed. This also unregisters the VisVim.dll 9 102. With uninstal.exe. 11 This removes most installed items, but does not delete the files you 12 unpacked. 13 143. By hand. 15 This is a bit more work, but you can decide exactly what you want to 16 remove. For uninstalling the "Edit with Vim" popup menu entry you still 17 have to use uninstal.exe. 18 19It's recommended to use the method that matches with how you installed Vim. 20Thus if you installed Vim by hand, deleted it by hand. 21 22The first two methods should be available from the Add/Remove software window 23and the Vim entry in the Start menu. If these have been removed already, find 24"uninstall-gui.exe" or "uninstal.exe" in the Vim directory. 25 Running these programs should be self-explanatory. Carefully read the 26messages to avoid deleting something you want to keep. 27 28Here are guidelines for removing Vim by hand: 29 301. Remove the "Edit with Vim" popup menu entry, if it exists. This will only 31 be on MS-Windows 95/98/NT. This is done by running the uninstal.exe 32 program. It removes the registry entries for the "Edit with Vim" popup 33 menu entry. You only need to run uninstal.exe when you have installed the 34 menu entry. You can also run uninstal.exe from the Control panel with the 35 Add/Remove programs application. 36 Note that uninstal.exe offers you to uninstal other items. You can skip 37 this. 38 392. Only if you have used the OLE version of gvim: Remove the registration of 40 this program by running "gvim -unregister" in a console window. 41 423. Delete the executables. If you copied the executables to another location, 43 you will have to delete them from where you copied them to. If you don't 44 remember where they are, look in the directories from the $PATH environment 45 variable. 46 If you created .bat files when installing Vim, also search for vim.bat, 47 gvim.bat, etc. 48 494. If you completely want to delete vim, and are not going to install another 50 version, you can delete the vimrc files that you created. These are 51 normally located in a directory like "C:\vim". If the $VIM environment 52 variable is set, it will tell the name of the directory. Normally you can 53 delete everything in this directory. Warning: You might have put some 54 files there that you would like to save. If you did remove it all, you can 55 skip the next step. 56 575. Delete the distributed files. If you followed the directions, these will 58 be located in a directory like "C:\vim\vim72". If the $VIM environment 59 variable is set, the directory will be $VIM\vim72. Delete the "vim72" 60 directory and all that is in it. Warning: If you changed any of the 61 distributed files, or added some of your own files, you might want to save 62 these first. But normally you would not have changed or added files here. 63 646. Remove setting the $VIM and $VIMRUNTIME environment variable and adjust 65 $PATH. $VIM only needs to be removed if you are not going to install 66 another version of Vim. $VIMRUNTIME is mostly not set. Check if $PATH 67 contains the path of the vim directory. Note that $PATH may be set in 68 several places, you will have to find the right one, and only delete the 69 Vim path from it. You can most likely find the lines that set $PATH, $VIM 70 and/or $VIMRUNTIME in C:\autoexec.bat. Under Windows NT you might need to 71 use the "System Properties" editor to change the environment variables, if 72 they are not in the C:\autoexec.bat file. You can start it by selecting 73 Start/Settings/Control Panel and then "System". 74 757. If you added a Vim entry in the start menu, delete it. 76 778. If you created icons for Vim on the desktop, delete them. 78 79Vim does not use .ini files. The above should remove all Vim files, except 80the ones that you moved elsewhere yourself. 81