A couple of month ago I asked a similar question. I was told that it is not possible to get rid of everything that has been installed by GSX.
I don't know how you could possibly haven't understood the clear and precise answer you got. You asked a very specific question, that is how to remove EVERYTHING that has been installed by GSX, and since you are repeating this here again, it's clear this was exactly what you meant, and that's why the answer you got was correct, because if you really want to "get rid" of EVERYTHING, it's not really possible, and it would be wrong if it was.
I'll try to explain it again, for the benefit of others:
- Suppose you have other products that installed the VC++ redistributables runtimes. GSX install those as well, which in fact is more like an update check, since the standard MS installer we install, will only install that library if you are missing it or your version was outdated. If your existing version was already up to date, it won't do anything. So, clearly, if it was possible to remove EVERYTHING that was installed by GSX, removing this library would not just be wrong, it would screw up hundreds of other software as well.
- Same as the .NET libraries.
- Same as the QLM library from Soraco, which might also used by other products.
And note that, each and every set of these libraries will also add or update lots of entries in your registry, and it would be also wrong to undo all these changes, because each individual version of these libraries requires new or updated registry keys so, if you were hypothetically allowed to "clean up everything" ( you are rightfully aren't ), you will end up with a compromised Window installation that, at the very least, would require reinstalling ALL of these libraries, surely the VC++ and the .NET would have to, you might get away with QLM, since is not that widespread, but I know a couple of other developers also use it.
That's because you specifically asked how to "remove EVERYTHING", so the correct answer you got was that no, you are not supposed to remove EVERYTHING, because it would cause a great deal of damage if you tried to do that.
Now, if what you really mean with, wasn't really to remove "everything" but, instead, to remove only things that strictly matters to GSX alone and won't affect anything else, there are several ways to Uninstall GSX.
- Clicking the "Uninstall" button in the FSDT Installer. You'll be asked if you want to Uninstall or just Unlink. If you just Unlink it, it will prevent GSX to be loaded by the simulator. This is the easiest thing to do for troubleshooting. If you think GSX is causing issue to your sim, by Unlinking it, you can test the sim without GSX this way, since when it's Unlinked, NOTHING from GSX is ever loaded in the simulator, regardless if GSX is still installed in the Addon Manager folder.
- If you reply to Uninstall it too, not just Unlinking it, it will also remove GSX from the Addon Manager folder. This is done mainly to save disk space in case you don't plan to use GSX for a long while. It won't make the slightest difference to the simulator, since Unlinking it's enough to prevent GSX to be loaded, Uninstalling will ONLY save extra disk space.
- Now the "leftover folders". Not removing these is obviously correct, because those are YOUR files, like your Settings, your custom airport profiles, your custom airplane profiles, anything that is not part of the GSX stock set of files, is your stuff, so the Uninstaller doesn't remove any of those. If you think any of these files are causing problems, you can remove them manually. Again, with GSX Unliked or Uninstalled, having those leftover folders won't make any difference whatsoever to how the simulator works, they will just take some (not really much ) space, and the advantage of not removing those folders, is that if you reinstall GSX again, you won't lose all your personal preference and settings.
But if you really want to remove them, here they are:
%APPDATA%\Virtuali ( all your preferences and custom profiles for airports and airplanes )
%PROGRAMDATA%\Virtuali ( the airport cache, used only if you don't use the SU10 Navdata API option )
That's all about GSX proper.
If you ALSO want to remove the FSDT Installer itself, it has an entry in the Windows Control Panel, like any other Windows program out there. But since it used to manage all FSDT products, for both MSFS, P3D and FSX, you shouldn't remove it unless you want to remove those too.
