Generic uninstallers flourished[jargon] in the 1990s due to the popularity of shared libraries and the constraints of then-current operating systems, especially Microsoft Windows XP.
Declining storage costs and increasing capacity subsequently made reclaiming disk space less urgent, while end-user applications have increasingly relied on simpler installation architectures that consolidate all components to facilitate removal.
After the release of Norton Desktop for Windows 2.0, Ken Spreitzer, who was a tester for the product at Symantec, capitalized on the uninstall idea and wrote the first widely used PC program called "UnInstaller", initially licensed to MicroHelp and then by February 1998 sold by CyberMedia.
In 1995, Spreitzer told The New York Times that the royalties he received from MicroHelp for Uninstaller made him a millionaire by age 30.
Tim O'Pry, while president of MicroHelp, substantially rewrote the code for Uninstaller version 2, which became a best-selling program.