Introduction | Downloads | A little bit of history | Then came Safarp | Troubleshooting | Version history | Awards / Reviews | License | About | Forums

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Introduction

Safarp is a small and fast alternative to the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel applet of Windows 2000/XP. It displays a list of the installed programs and allows one to uninstall / repair them.

Additional features are:

  • Search function
  • Obsolete list entries removal
  • Export program list to a file (HTML, RTF, CSV...)
  • New report templates can be written to export to other file formats
  • Accessibility via the Control Panel (optional)
  • Option to hide the Windows hotfixes
  • Standard Windows interface (no fancy UI that slows down the program)

Downloads

Download Safarp here

Safarp is also available as a zip file (without installer). Download it here

Source code

A little bit of history

Windows 2000 introduced a new version of the Add or Remove Programs applet which offered new features:

  • Prettier
  • Displayed the estimated (ie. sometimes totally inaccurate) size and frequency of use for each program
  • Displayed links to online support

Windows 2003 Add or Remove Programs applet

These features came at a price: the applet was much slower to load. For instance, on my workstation it takes 30 to 40 seconds before it's fully loaded (ok, I have a lot of stuff installed on my workstation).

Such features are useful when you want to know what programs eat too much space on your hard drive or need a link to online support. But the loading time is really annoying when it comes to quickly uninstall a program.

Then came Safarp

So I made Safarp. It was designed for Windows 2000 and later versions (Windows XP, Windows Server 2003...). Safarp stands for Small And Fast Add/Remove Programs. It's not as full featured, not as pretty, but it's fast. As a comparison, where Add or Remove Programs takes 30~40 seconds to load, Safarp loads in less than a second. This fastness is allowed by two features: the Fast mode and the Load icons option.

Fast mode

The Fast mode is enabled by default. In that mode, only information that is easily accessible is loaded. As a result, the loading time is really short, but some information (such as the program size, frequency of use, etc.) is missing. Fortunately, the critical data (the program name and how to uninstall it) is always provided and will be sufficient in most cases.

Load icons

The Load icons option is disabled by default. Loading icons is slow because the program has to extract each icon from the program files, so turning it off significantly decreases the loading time.

To achieve the best loading time, turn Fast mode on and Load icons off. This is the mode Safarp was initially designed for.

Safarp

This program gives users the choice. If I want to free up some space on my hard disk, wondering what program is bigger than others, I load the Add or Remove Programs applet. But if I want to uninstall a program, be it big or small, new or old, and want it done now, I launch Safarp. Well. That's all.

Troubleshooting

Q: When launched, the program asks for a file named msvcp71.dll
A: This file can be downloaded from this site. Copy it to the Safarp installation folder. This problem should not occur anymore with Safarp 0.5 and later.

Version history

2005-08-08 - Safarp 0.5

  • New
    • Support for the Quiet mode and Repair functions for the programs that were installed with Microsoft Windows Installer.
    • Added Frequency of use and Date last used columns.
    • Columns are now configurable.
    • The list can now be sorted by Program, Publisher, Size, Frequency of use and Date last used.
    • Better search field changes handling.
  • Removed
    • The Version column was removed as it wasn't very useful. The Program's version is still displayed in the Details panel.
  • Notes
    • This release was compiled with Visual C++ 6.0. As a result, the msvcp71.dll file is not required anymore. The required file is now msvcp60.dll, which is included with the OSes supported by Safarp. Moreover, the exe size is smaller :)

2005-07-06 - Safarp 0.4.1

  • Fixed
    • Regression: the main window's size and position wouldn't be saved anymore.

2005-07-04 - Safarp 0.4

  • New
    • Icons, program size, frequency of use and last use date can be loaded
    • The program details are shown in an optional panel
    • Search function
    • Programs specific to the current user are now listed
    • Optimized the loading time a little bit
  • Notes
    • The old Safarp behavior can be reproduced by turning the Fast mode on and the Load icons option off

2005-06-21 - Safarp 0.3

  • New
    • Installer / Uninstaller
    • Option to hide the Windows hotfixes
    • Quiet uninstall is now enabled (for programs that support it)
    • Number of programs and load time are now displayed in the status bar
    • The column order is now saved

2005-06-07 - Safarp 0.2

  • New
    • Menus and Keyboard shortcuts
    • Remove entry function
    • Save the program list as a report
    • Template system for the reports
    • HTML, RTF, CSV and TSV report templates
    • View modes: large icons, small icons, list, details
    • Refresh function
    • About box
  • Modified
    • Reduced the size of safarp.exe

2005-05-23 - Safarp 0.1

  • First public release

Awards / Reviews

Softpedia Pick Award   Softpedia "100% FREE" Award   Soft32.com "Editor's Pick" Award

"And here comes Safarp. With this alternative software you can quickly have a brief list of software (just names), where you can ask details or just uninstall any of the installed programs. This approach gives you both good speed and optional details (by the way, you can switch to loading all details, and Safarp's list will still be faster and tighter than the standard one)."

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

See the GNU General Public License for more details.

About

Safarp was written in C++ using Dev-C++ 4.9.9.2 and MinGW 3.1.0. The release was compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 and compressed with UPX 1.25. The installer was built with NSIS 2.06.

To keep it small and fast, only Win32 API calls were used (no MFC).

Safarp is part of the Wistinga Projects.

Safarp PAD file. (What is PAD ?)