Help on proper Apps uninstall. Thank you.

Question

Hey everyone. I own a MacBook running on 10.5.8 Leopard. This being the first Mac I ever bought and since my Mac OS knowledge at that time was limited, whenever I wanted to delete an app, I would just drag the app itself to the trash not knowing about cache, preferences, application support files and other traces associated with the app that would be left behind. In other words I wouldn't "uninstall", I'd just "delete" the app icons from the Applications folder. I recently attempted cleaning up a little bit and I deleted traces from apps I installed in the past named "Eltima SyncMate 3" and "Samsung Kies", apps that remained on my system for minutes – that was the time it took to understand how poor they were. So I downloaded their installers again, in order to uninstall them properly using the "uninstaller" provided. All good. Then I did a Finder search in case files were left behind. Couple three files were found and I deleted them manually, plus 2 folders named something like SamsungKies.framework – really sorry can't remember their exact names – in the username/Library/Frameworks folder, not the HD/Library/Frameworks one. Please note that within the username/Library/Frameworks folder, existed just those 2 folders so after deleting them it was left showing 0 files, and that I left the HD/Library/Frameworks folder intact. After that I went to my HD and saw a folder created I had never seen before, named "Root" having 0 files. Do correct me please, but I think it's obviously related to me deleting those frameworks folders or something. What should I do? Delete it or keep it? It shows as having 0 files – I don't know about hidden ones though. In a way I also worry about the possibility that I harmed the system in general by deleting those 2 frameworks folders. I mean, I haven't noticed anything to imply a corrupted system in general terms, besides couple hours after deleting them where I restarted my MacBook and it did take an unusual amount of minutes to start up – although this has happened to me in the past a few times, I just don't know if it's related to the case I'm talking about. Also, if you take a minute and inspect the photo I provide, could you tell me about "END", "sockets.log", "\Work\indextest.txt" plus the two .txt files right below it (with the random numbers between full stops and underscores) and "upnp_trace1.log". I'm 100% sure those files where created in a similar way, but in the past, because I'm positive those didn't even exist when I first started using Mac OS. And last question kinda off topic, do I need to keep the contents of the "Logs" folders under either username/Library or HD/Library or can I go ahead and delete them? Any help on this is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

Hello James,
I suspect Klaus1 will explain for himself but he is well worth taking note of.   He certainly has no reason to promoter AppCleaner and I have to say I find it an excellent facility too.
The key rule to remember when downloading anything is ... do not download an app with out first finding out how to uninstall it.
If you do this in future you will markedly lessen your problems.