Bitcoin Forum

I installed Bitcoin 0.8.3 BETA, synced it, transferred my on line wallet to it, encrypted it and backed it up to a jump drive as a cold wallet.

Now I want to uninstall it from my win 7 machine for security (I will reinstall when I do the occasional transaction)

When I look for the application in programs and features in the control panel--there is nothing there to uninstall.

So how do I remove it from the computer so that the contents of my wallet does not interface with the internet?

You only need to delete/move the file wallet.dat (somewhere in AppData, look in the wiki).
Be sure that you correctly delete it though: files stay on the HDD even after you deleted them.

Start button -> All Programs -> Bitcoin -> Uninstall Bitcoin

As mentioned above, though, the Bitcoin client's existence as an application on the PC isn't the danger - the wallet.dat file's existence on an Internet-connected PC is. You'll want to move it to an encrypted archive on a couple USB sticks and/or keep a paper backup. Just stuffing it in an encrypted file named something non-obvious and moving it anywhere but the default location is a big step up in security over just leaving it in the default folder.

The wallet.dat file can be found in driveinstalledon(defaultC):\Users\ComputerUserName\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin -- AppData is a hidden folder, so you'll need to go to folder options in Control Panel to enable viewing hidden folders.

If you're paranoid, you should also "shred" the wallet file (after moving somewhere so you can use it later, of course) using some type of file shredder, which deletes the program and writes over it multiple times with random data so it can't be recovered.

When you want to use the wallet again, you'll need to move the file back over to \AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin. Alternately, you may want to consider the Armory client, which offers a good range of options for easily importing and exporting wallet files.