Computer Tips From A Computer Guy

How to Remove or Uninstall Java (JRE) on Windows and Mac

Posted: 22 Oct 2015 12:57 PM PDT

Looking for a way to get rid of Java on your Windows or Mac machine? Though essential to some web users, most people do not need to risk running Java on their machines because of all the security vulnerabilities associated with Java.

In this article, I’m going to talk about the steps you need to take in order to completely remove all traces of Java from your Windows machine. The process for Mac is a bit different, so you can scroll down the Remove Java on Mac section if you are running OS X.

Note that the newer versions of Java (Java 8v20 and higher) have a built-in tool for uninstalling older Java versions automatically, but sometimes even this tool doesn’t get rid of everything. Also, it keeps the latest version installed, which you might not want either.

Is Java Installed?

You can check whether you have Java installed or not in Windows by going to the Control Panel and looking for the Java icon. If you see it there, that means you have Java installed.

Using this Control Panel option, you can also disable Java in your web browser without uninstalling it. I’ll explain that option below also. If you go back to the Control Panel and click on Programs and Features, you can see all the different versions of Java installed on your computer.

So what’s next? Well, the first thing I do when removing Java on Windows is to uninstall the older versions first.

Remove Older Versions of Java

To get rid of the older versions, you can download and install the latest version of Java, which will automatically check for older versions and then install the latest version or you can run the Java Uninstall Tool.

The applet will check your version of Java and then remove out-of-date versions. If there are older versions, you will get a message showing you the versions and giving you the ability to uninstall them.

Click on the Uninstall Selected Versions button to remove the older versions. As you can see, I don’t need Java 8 Update 60 because I have the latest Java 8 Update 65 installed. Now that you only have the latest version, we can do one of two things: either disable Java or uninstall it.

Disable Java

If you need to occasionally use Java for certain websites, but don’t need it enabled all the time, you can disable it instead of uninstalling. To do this, open the Control Panel, click on Java and then click on the Security tab.

Uncheck the Enable Java content in the browser box to disable Java in Internet Explorer. It’s worth noting that Chrome doesn’t even support Java anymore since version 42, so you don’t have to worry about it in that browser.

For Firefox, you have to click on Tools, then Add-ons and select Plugins. Click on Java Platform and then click on Disable. Note that even though Java is disabled, it can become outdated and still present a security vulnerability to your computer since it is installed.

Uninstall Java in Windows

To uninstall Java, first remove the older versions like shown above and then go to Control Panel and Programs and Features. Click on the latest Java version listed there and click on Uninstall.

Technically, this is all you should have to do, but if you really want to get rid of every trace of Java, I recommend using a freeware app called JavaRa. Once you download it, just run the application. You’ll see a couple of icons, but the one we want to use is Remove Java Runtime.

On the first screen, it’ll show you that the uninstaller was not found, which is fine since we uninstalled all versions of Java. Just click on the Next button.

The most important part of this program is Step 2. Here you want to click the Perform Removal Routine button, which will remove any leftover files, folders and Java registry entries.

Even after uninstalling Java using its own tools, JavaRa was able to remove 12 more items that were left behind.

Click Next and you’ll see a button to download the latest version. Unless you want to reinstall Java, just click Next and then click Finish on the next screen. Now Java is completely removed from your Windows system.

Remove Java on Mac

On Macs, everything is pretty much the same, except for the uninstall process. You can see whether Java is installed on your Mac in pretty much the same way as Windows. Just open up System Preferences and check to see if there is a Java icon at the bottom.

If the Java icon is there, that means you have Java installed on OS X. Also, just as in Windows, you can choose to keep Java installed, but disable it in Safari if you like. The first way is to click on the Java icon in System Preferences, which will open the Java Control Panel, which looks exactly like the one in Windows. Click on the Security tab and then uncheck the Enable Java content in browser box.

java mac security

The other way is to disable Java in Safari directly. To do that, open Safari and then go to Preferences.

Click on the Security tab and then click on the Plug-in Settings button at the very bottom next to Internet plug-ins.

You should see Java in the list and unchecking the box will disable Java in Safari. If you want to uninstall Java on OS X, it’s a bit technical. First, open up the Terminal by clicking on Spotlight and typing in Terminal or by going to Applications – Utilities and then Terminal.

Now copy and paste in the following commands one at a time and press Enter after pasting each command.

sudo rm -fr /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin   sudo rm -fr /Library/PreferencePanes/JavaControlPanel.prefpane

When you press enter, you will be asked to enter your administrator password. If everything went well, you won’t see any output.

If you go and check in System Preferences, the Java icon should be gone. Also, if you go to the plugins section in Safari, it will also be gone from the list of installed plugins. That’s about it for removing Java on Macs. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

The post How to Remove or Uninstall Java (JRE) on Windows and Mac appeared first on Online Tech Tips.

How to Automatically Delete Files in Windows

Posted: 22 Oct 2015 09:26 AM PDT

Earlier I wrote about a program called DropIt that automatically moves or copies files for you when new files appear inside a folder. This can be useful, for example, if you have limited space on a local hard drive and want to move all your downloads off to an external storage device.

If you want to automatically delete files, there are two ways you can go about it in Windows. The first method involves downloading a freeware app called AutoDelete that lets you configure a schedule for deleting files in a particular folder. I’ve already written two detailed guides on using the program (here and here), so check those out if you prefer a freeware program to get the job done.

The second method for deleting files is to create a batch file and then schedule that batch file to run. You can do all of that without installing any third-party software. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps for creating a batch file and then using Task Scheduler to have the script run on a reoccurring basis.

Step 1 – Create Batch File

If creating a batch file sounds a bit scary or too technical, don’t worry because you don’t have to know what any of that means. I’ll explain what you need to copy and paste, where and what options you can change. First, open Notepad and copy and paste the following line of text:

forfiles -p "C:\Test" -s -m *.* /D -5 /C "cmd /c del @path"

The line above probably makes no sense, which is perfectly fine as I’ll explain it down below. Basically, it tells Windows to delete all files in the C:\Test folder and sub-folders that are older than 5 days. Here is what your Notepad file should look like.

Before we get into more details about the command, let’s save the file and give it a test run. First, create a folder on your computer called Test at the root of the C drive. Next, click File – Save and save the file as a batch file. To do that, type in a name followed by .bat and then change the Save as type dropdown to All Files.

Note that you can save the file to whichever location on the hard drive you like, it doesn’t really matter. Now create some dummy files in the Test folder and then double click on the Delete.bat file to run it. Anything get deleted? Probably not!

The reason why nothing was deleted is because the command has /D -5, which means files that are 5 days or older. In order to delete any file regardless of when it was created, you can either change the -5 to -0 or you can remove the /D -5 part altogether. Now if you run it, all the files will be deleted.

To customize the command, the first thing you can do is change the directory to something other than C:\Test. That’s as simple as copying the path from Windows Explorer for the directory you want and pasting it into the command in Notepad.

Next is the -s parameter that you see after the directory path. This indicates that the command should look into all sub-folders also. If you do not want to delete files from subfolders, go ahead and remove the -s parameter.

Next is -m followed by *.*, which means that the command should evaluate files of every kind. If you only want to delete a specific file type in a folder, like PDF files or JPG images, just change *.* to *.pdf or *.jpeg and it will only remove those files.

The /D -X part we already talked about in terms of how old the files have to be in order to qualify for deletion. You can either keep it with a value greater than 1, set it to 0, or remove it altogether. That’s about all we need to know about the command.

There are a few things to note about running this command. Firstly, when files are deleted, they do not go to the Recycle Bin, but instead are deleted permanently, so be careful when using it. Secondly, the command only deletes files, not folders.

Since this is a batch file, you could also add multiples versions of this command in the same file. For example, here I am creating a batch file that will delete all DOCX files older than 180 days, all PDF files older than 60 days and all TXT files regardless of how old the files are.

Step 2 – Schedule Batch File

Now that you have your batch file created and saved, let’s go ahead and schedule it to run on a reoccurring basis. To do this, we have to open up Task Scheduler.

Luckily, I’ve already written an article on how to schedule a batch file, so open that page to get started. Scroll down to the Schedule Batch File on PC Startup section and follow along.

The only thing you have to change is the Trigger. You can choose from Daily, Weekly, Monthly, When the computer starts, When I log on or When a specific event is logged.

When you pick something like Weekly or Monthly and click Next, you’ll get a new screen where you can configure the exact time and days you want the script to run.

Hopefully, this is a good solution for most people who need to perform some simple automated tasks for deleting files on their PCs. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

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