1Uninstalling Vim on 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 uninstall.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 uninstall.exe. 18 19It's recommended to use the method that matches with how you installed Vim. 20Thus if you installed Vim by hand, delete 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 "uninstall.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 is done by 31 running the uninstall.exe program. It removes the registry entries for the 32 "Edit with Vim" popup menu entry. You only need to run uninstall.exe when 33 you have installed the menu entry. You can also run uninstall.exe from the 34 Control panel with the Add/Remove programs application. 35 Note that uninstall.exe offers you the option to uninstall other items. You 36 can skip this. 37 382. Only if you have used the OLE version of gvim: Remove the registration of 39 this program by running "gvim -unregister" in a console window. 40 413. Delete the executables. If you copied the executables to another location, 42 you will have to delete them from where you copied them to. If you don't 43 remember where they are, look in the directories from the $PATH environment 44 variable. 45 If you created .bat files when installing Vim, also search for vim.bat, 46 gvim.bat, etc. 47 484. If you want to completely delete vim, and are not going to install another 49 version, you can delete the vimrc files that you created. These are 50 normally located in a directory like "C:\vim". If the $VIM environment 51 variable is set, it will tell the name of the directory. Normally you can 52 delete everything in this directory. Warning: You might have put some 53 files there that you would like to save. If you did remove it all, you can 54 skip the next step. 55 565. Delete the distributed files. If you followed the directions, these will 57 be located in a directory like "C:\vim\vim81". If the $VIM environment 58 variable is set, the directory will be $VIM\vim81. Delete the "vim81" 59 directory and all that is in it. Warning: If you changed any of the 60 distributed files, or added some of your own files, you might want to save 61 these first. But normally you would not have changed or added files here. 62 636. Remove setting the $VIM and $VIMRUNTIME environment variable and adjust 64 $PATH. $VIM only needs to be removed if you are not going to install 65 another version of Vim. $VIMRUNTIME is mostly not set. Check if $PATH 66 contains the path of the vim directory. Note that $PATH may be set in 67 several places, you will have to find the right one, and only delete the 68 Vim path from it. You might need to use the "System Properties" editor to 69 change the environment variables. You can start it by selecting 70 Start/Settings/Control Panel and then "System". 71 727. If you added a Vim entry in the start menu, delete it. 73 748. If you created icons for Vim on the desktop, delete them. 75 76Vim does not use .ini files. The above should remove all Vim files, except 77the ones that you moved elsewhere yourself. 78