I’ve covered this topic before, but things change in a couple years, so I thought it was time to do so again. SanDisks’ “U3 LaunchPad” is stupid and evil. It isn’t just some auto-launching application, it basically takes over your entire flash drive so you can’t actually use it how you’d like to. Don’t get me wrong, I love SanDisk Cruzer Titaniums, they are super fast and now quite cheap, but that software blows.
I think SanDisk has slowly gotten this message as they’ve now got a fairly easy to find
instruction page on how to remove U3. It is quite simple now too:
- Download the “U3 Removal Tool“
- Open the zip file
- Execute launchpadremoval.exe
- Follow the instructions, and it will nuke your USB drive of U3
Easy. But SanDisk could make it a step or two easier. How about you just NOT INSTALL U3 in the first place? Yea, I know, good idea.