U3 Uninstall vs. Windows Vista

U3 is a USB flash storage app that lets you carry and run Microsoft Windows applications directly from the flash drive. For some people, this is a useful tool. However, it is also an extremely invasive piece of software that automatically installs itself on a Windows PC without asking permission or providing the option not to install as soon as you plug in the USB flash drive. I also wanted to use this particular SanDisk 2GB flash drive on a Mac. So, I wanted that extra 6MB U3 uses back :-) So, I stuck the SanDisk drive in a physical PC (vs. a virtual machine) running Windows Vista and headed over to the U3 Launchpad Removal web page to download the current version of the uninstallation application. That's when the "fun" began. Here's what I ran into...

The first time I ran into the screen cap above, I thought, "Why can't it tell the difference between itself (the U3 infested USB flash drive) vs. my ReadyBoost drive?" After all, U3 had already installed itself and should know where its portable apps are if I had any ready to launch. But, ok, I removed the USB flash drive I use for ReadyBoost. I ran the uninstaller again and again was presented with the same warning. At this point, I had to scratch my head since there were zero USB devices (not even a printer) attached. Then, I guessed that the uninstaller was identifying the unused integrated flash drive slots (CF, SD, etc. slots). I had to soft-eject (use the Safely Remove Hardware option) to eliminate pointers to those unused slots before the U3 uninstaller finally worked.

This was an incredible waste of time for what should be a simple operation. Unfortunately, U3 embeds itself so deeply on the flash drive that you can't simply erase the files to get rid of it. However, I can now use this particular flash drive safely on a PC or Mac and have recovered that 6MB of space.