Deployment - Uninstall Previous Application

E

Eric

We are about to deploy a new version of our application re-written in .Net.
Our .Net app is using the installer included with VS.Net 2003. The
previous version of the application was deployed using InstallShield. Is it
possible, using a Custom Action, to call the previous apps uninstall
routine? If not, help on how to uninstall the previous version while still
using the .Net installer would be appreciated.
 
G

Gary Chang[MSFT]

Hi Eric,
Is it possible, using a Custom Action, to call the previous
apps uninstall routine? If not, help on how to uninstall the
previous version while still using the .Net installer would
be appreciated.

Based on my experience, a custom action is not suitable for removing an
existing product. The general convention to do such a task is via the
installation process' standard action--RemoveExistingProducts. To apply
this approach, you only need to add a corresponding row to specify the
target product's UpgradeCode and Product Code in your installation package
Upgrade table, e.g.

YourPreviouApp's UpgradeCode 1.0.0 Null Null 256 Null
YourPreviouApp's ProductCode
(Null means you don't need to specify a value in the corresponding cell)

But I am afraid you need to modify your installation package(.msi) via the
Orca utility:
Orca.exe
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/o
rca_exe.asp)

The Visual Studio IDE doesn't have this function.

For the details information about the RemoveExistingProducts action, please
refer to the following Platform SDK article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/r
emoveexistingproducts_action.asp


Thanks!

Best regards,

Gary Chang
Microsoft Community Support
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