A Guide to Uninstalling Roboform

A Guide to Uninstalling Roboform
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Overview

Since storing passwords and confidential information is a bit touchy, I’m going to walk you through the process of backing up your data, removing RoboForm and ensuring all traces are securely deleted permanently after the uninstall.

Hopefully you’ll be storing your passwords in another safe location. Here are some articles related to managing passwords and online account information.

Reviewing the Best Password Software for PCs

Tips for Managing Website Passwords

Backing up RoboForm Data

Depending on why you are looking to remove RoboForm, you may want to make sure you have a good backup of the data. If you are removing RoboForm and never plan on using it again, you can skip the rest of this section and proceed directly to the “Removing RoboForm” section below.

To make a backup, open up RoboForm by clicking on it in the taskbar or in the browser toolbar and select “Options” (Figure 1).

In the options window, click on User Data and then “Backup…” (Figure 2). Select a location to save the files to and Click OK.

Your data is now backed up.

Figure 2: RoboForm Backup

Removing RoboForm

Next, we’ll walk through the removal of RoboForm. The process will be nearly identical for both Windows XP and Windows 7. I’ll be sure to point out the differences along the way.

  1. For Windows XP, go to Start, Control Panel and double click on Add or Remove Programs. For Windows 7, go to Start, Control Panel and click on Programs and Features
  1. Scroll down to AI RoboForm (AllUsers) and click Remove (XP) or Uninstall (Windows 7)

  2. The RoboForm Uninstaller dialog box will appear. Take note of the installation directory – we’ll want to double check this in the next section – write it down if you don’t think you’ll be able to remember it. If you don’t plan on reinstalling RoboForm on this computer, check the box to “Remove all Passcards, Identities, Safenotes from this computer” and click OK (Figure 3).

  3. Assuming you chose to delete your identities and data, RoboForm will give you one more warning asking you to confirm the deletion. Click Yes.

  4. If you have any windows open that RoboForm uses such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, RoboForm will ask for permission to close them. Click Yes. In my test, RoboForm was unable to close my Firefox window and thus the uninstall didn’t fully complete. We’ll go through some general clean up in the next section. If you get a warning stating the uninstall didn’t complete, click OK (Figure 4).

The main RoboForm application will be gone now – you should no longer see the RoboForm toolbar in your task tray or in your browsers.

Figure 3: RoboForm Uninstall Dialog Box

Figure 4: RoboForm Uninstall Failure

Cleanup

As I mentioned above, not all programs do a proper job cleaning up after themselves. It’s always a good practice to make sure when you uninstall something that it does proper cleanup. We’re going to make sure all of the RoboForm directories have been removed.

Open up My Computer and browse to the directory you took note of in step 3 above. If you installed to the default location, it should be c:\program files. Look for a directory called “Siber Systems”. Right click on it and select Delete.

Depending on your situation, you may consider performing a free space secure disk wipe – permanently overwriting the free space on your hard drive with random data to mask the old data that existed – namely your RoboForm identities and account data. This way, if your computer is ever stolen or your hard drive is re-used by someone else after you dispose of it, the data you once stored won’t be able to be retrieved. If you don’t plan on using RoboForm again, I would highly recommend this. Refer to this article for more information about a free tool that can securely wipe disk space.