If you’re the type of person who sweeps things under the rug, knowing full well that someday the rug will start to bulge, there’s really no easy solution. Either vacuum under the rug or trip on it.

If, like me, you install dozens of programs every month and are too lazy to get rid of the ones you don’t want, soon your hard drive, like mine, will suffer from bloat, like me, and slow to a crawl.

Do you really need all those programs, games and your long trail of temporary files? Did you really need that second helping of pumpkin pie?

Like me, you’ve probably used the uninstaller that comes with Windows to get rid of crapware you no longer want. But the Windows uninstaller leaves behind your odd registry entry, not to mention short cuts and installation trails.

That detritus will slow down your PC experience. You really should get rid of those files.

Into the ring comes a challenger to the reigning champion. It’s called Your Uninstaller, and in my experience, it is one of the best programs I’ve found that will get rid of unwanted program files permanently.

You’re given a choice of four kinds of uninstallers, from quick to advanced. The latter sets a restore point before it does its magic. That’s important, in the rare case when the magician messes up and his disappearing assistant gets caught in the trap door. It then uninstalls the program, searches for any leftover files and banishes them all to bloat alley.

In my tests, though, it failed to uninstall two programs — Elementary Advantage, which has its own uninstall feature, and the annoying Yahoo toolbar.

My favorite feature is the unistaller’s Hunter Mode. Move a gun sight over a shortcut, and it finds the offending program and zaps it.

If all that weren’t enough, Your Uninstaller comes with a startup manager and start menu manager that are easy to use; a disk cleaner and file shredder; and a utility that brings up Windows tools.

Installation is a breeze, and the features are intuitive. Newbies will have no problems with Your Uninstaller, which can be downloaded for free at www.ursoftware.com. The trial version, which is fully functional, lasts for 21 days. After that, if you want to keep using the program, it costs $30.