Clean Rainmeter Uninstall


If Rainmeter is misbehaving for you, which might be due to some file corruption on your system, or a file "ownership" issue if you have restored Rainmeter from a backup of a different OS or computer, you might want to do a "clean" installation of Rainmeter.

Note: If you want to save any skins you have created or installed, first copy somewhere else the files in:

C:\Users\YourName\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins

and the contents of:

C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\Plugins

Clean Install

  • Exit Rainmeter.
  • Download a fresh copy of the installer from Rainmeter.net.
  • Use the "Add or Remove Programs" functionality in Windows to uninstall the Rainmeter program.

    Note: This will likely leave behind some traces of Rainmeter that were added or changed after the initial installation. We want to get really "clean", so ensure the following:

  • Completely delete the following folders:

    The Program:
    C:\Program Files\Rainmeter

    Your "Skin" files:
    C:\Users\YourName\Documents\Rainmeter

    Rainmeter settings, Layouts and 3rd-party plugins:
    C:\Users\YourName\Appdata\Roaming\Rainmeter

  • Delete the Rainmeter shortcut icon from the Windows Startup folder:

    If installed for your user account
    C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

    If installed for "all users"
    C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp

  • Restart your computer.
  • Install Rainmeter using the downloaded installer.

Be sure Rainmeter is working correctly and loading the default illustro suite of skins. If it is, then you can carefully copy back skins and plugins, testing between to make sure that a misbehaving skin or plugin wasn't the cause of the issue in the first place.