Why does installing a game/program sometimes take several hours, but uninstalling usually take no more than a few minutes?

Question

Why does installing a game/program sometimes take several hours, but uninstalling usually take no more than a few minutes?

In: 3666

Answer 1

When you install something, all the program files needs to be decompressed and deployed by the installer which also makes the necessary registry entries, too ‒ every computer is at least a bit different. But when you uninstall something, the uninstaller only needs to delete things and it knows all locations perfectly, so, it can be done quickly.