Red Dead Redemption 2 Won’t Leave Your PC? Here’s the Bulletproof Way to Delete Every Last Byte

Why the game keeps coming back like a ghost

Rockstar didn’t just ship a 120 GB western—they welded it to Windows. During my own move from a 1 TB SATA SSD to a 2 TB NVMe, I “uninstalled” RDR2 three times, yet 18 GB of social-club hooks, shader caches, and scattered registry entries survived every attempt. The culprits are:

• Rockstar Games Launcher re-downloading core packs “for integrity”
• Vulkan & DX12 shader caches hiding in AppData\Local\Rockstar Games\
• Save-game cloud-sync triggers that reinstall the launcher service on boot
• Hidden audio middleware (Wwise & Dolby Atmos) that ties into Windows’ sound stack

Below is the exact sequence that finally purged the game from my rig without breaking the launcher for GTA V.

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Walk-through: how I nuked it for real

1. Protect your saves
   Copy %userprofile%\Documents\Rockstar Games\Red Dead Redemption 2\Profiles to a USB stick. Cloud saves will restore later if you reinstall.
2. Shut the Rockstar launcher down hard

• Win + R → taskkill /f /im RockstarService.exe
• Kill RDR2.exe, PlayRDR2.exe, and SocialClubHelper.exe in Task Manager.

1. Native uninstall (do this first)

• Steam: Library → right-click RDR2 → Manage → Uninstall.
• Rockstar Launcher: Settings → My Installed Games → RDR2 → Uninstall.
• Epic/Game Pass: Library → … → Uninstall.
  Let it finish—this removes the bulk of the 110 GB payload.

1. Manual mop-up

• Folders to delete:
  ‑ C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Red Dead Redemption 2
  ‑ %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Rockstar Games\Red Dead Redemption 2 (shader & crash dumps)
  ‑ %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Packages\RockstarGames.RedDeadRedemption2* (MS Store version)
• Registry keys:
  ‑ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Rockstar Games\Red Dead Redemption 2
  ‑ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Rockstar Games\Red Dead Redemption 2

1. Clear the cache folders

• %userprofile%\AppData\Local\D3DSCache
• %userprofile%\AppData\Local\NVIDIA\GLCache (or AMD equivalent)

At this point my drive was down from 118 GB to 2.3 GB of leftovers—still unacceptable.

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Finish the job with Perfect Uninstaller

1. Grab the portable build of Perfect Uninstaller (no install bloat).
2. Launch it, wait for the scan, then select Red Dead Redemption 2 in the list.
3. Check “Advanced scan” and “Remove residual registry.”
4. Hit “Force Uninstall.”
   In my case it found:

• 1,247 orphaned registry values
• Rockstar Social Club audio service remnants
• Two Vulkan layer JSONs in System32

1. Click Delete, reboot, and run Windows Disk Cleanup once more—0 bytes left.

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Bottom line

RDR2 is engineered to survive a casual uninstall. Do the native removal, then hunt the leftovers manually, and finally let Perfect Uninstaller vacuum the registry. Follow these steps and you’ll reclaim every gigabyte—no ghost reinstalls, no broken Rockstar launcher.