How to uninstall a program?

[Adam Clauss]

I am needing to automate some installation tasks. I first need to determine
if there is already a version of a program installed. The program appears
in the Add/Remove Programs in control panel, and I know this is all stored
in the registry. But short of searching through the entire registry, I
cannot figure out how to locate the program.

I see that in the registry (for .msi) installs, stores something like:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{9783
3EC6-ACD7-4FD2-BFAF-B57438B55C1E}

In that key contains the Uninstall string I need. However, I do not really
want to have to search the entire registry for the product. What is that
long identifier in the name? How is it determined, etc? Or is it the same
on every machine and I can hardcode it in?

 

[Dmitriy Lapshin [C# / .NET MVP]]

Hi Adam,

Please see replies to the "Uninstall application" thread in this newsgroup.
This should answer your question.

 

[Adam Clauss]

Unfortunately, that really isn't what I need.

I am not uninstalling a version of MY program, but another program. And I
am not writing an actual installer per-se, but one thing my program needs to
do to perform some tests is to remove any existing version of this other
program - so I use the suggestions mentioned in the other thread.

--
Adam Clauss
(e-mail address removed)

Hi Adam,

Please see replies to the "Uninstall application" thread in this newsgroup.
This should answer your question.

--
Sincerely,
Dmitriy Lapshin [C# / .NET MVP]
Bring the power of unit testing to the VS .NET IDE today!
http://www.x-unity.net/teststudio.aspx

I am needing to automate some installation tasks. I first need to determine
if there is already a version of a program installed. The program appears
in the Add/Remove Programs in control panel, and I know this is all stored
in the registry. But short of searching through the entire registry, I
cannot figure out how to locate the program.

I see that in the registry (for .msi) installs, stores something like:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{9783

3EC6-ACD7-4FD2-BFAF-B57438B55C1E}

In that key contains the Uninstall string I need. However, I do not really
want to have to search the entire registry for the product. What is that
long identifier in the name? How is it determined, etc? Or is it the same
on every machine and I can hardcode it in?

 

[Dmitriy Lapshin [C# / .NET MVP]]

Well, in this case you should really scan the registry. I remember an
uninstall command is specified for each program listed in the registry so
you can use these.
Not sure though this is the case for MSI-based installs, but these use a
uniform uninstall method so you only need a product code.

--
Sincerely,
Dmitriy Lapshin [C# / .NET MVP]
Bring the power of unit testing to the VS .NET IDE today!
http://www.x-unity.net/teststudio.aspx

Unfortunately, that really isn't what I need.

I am not uninstalling a version of MY program, but another program. And I
am not writing an actual installer per-se, but one thing my program needs to
do to perform some tests is to remove any existing version of this other
program - so I use the suggestions mentioned in the other thread.

--
Adam Clauss
(e-mail address removed)

Hi Adam,

Please see replies to the "Uninstall application" thread in this newsgroup.
This should answer your question.

--
Sincerely,
Dmitriy Lapshin [C# / .NET MVP]
Bring the power of unit testing to the VS .NET IDE today!
http://www.x-unity.net/teststudio.aspx

I am needing to automate some installation tasks. I first need to determine
if there is already a version of a program installed. The program appears
in the Add/Remove Programs in control panel, and I know this is all stored
in the registry. But short of searching through the entire registry, I
cannot figure out how to locate the program.

I see that in the registry (for .msi) installs, stores something like:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{9783

 

[Adam Clauss]

uniform uninstall method so you only need a product code.
Thats exactly my question Was wondering if there was a way to locate
this product code without scanning through the registry. A "fast" lookup
of sorts...
I've got it implemented right now as scanning, I just can't help but
thinking that it is inefficient. I figured somewhere it was stored by the
app name or something upon installation.

--
Adam Clauss
(e-mail address removed)

Well, in this case you should really scan the registry. I remember an
uninstall command is specified for each program listed in the registry so
you can use these.
Not sure though this is the case for MSI-based installs, but these use a
uniform uninstall method so you only need a product code.

--
Sincerely,
Dmitriy Lapshin [C# / .NET MVP]
Bring the power of unit testing to the VS .NET IDE today!
http://www.x-unity.net/teststudio.aspx

Unfortunately, that really isn't what I need.

I am not uninstalling a version of MY program, but another program. And I
am not writing an actual installer per-se, but one thing my program

needs

to
do to perform some tests is to remove any existing version of this other
program - so I use the suggestions mentioned in the other thread.

--
Adam Clauss
(e-mail address removed)
in message news:%[email protected]...

Hi Adam,

Please see replies to the "Uninstall application" thread in this newsgroup.
This should answer your question.

--
Sincerely,
Dmitriy Lapshin [C# / .NET MVP]
Bring the power of unit testing to the VS .NET IDE today!
http://www.x-unity.net/teststudio.aspx

I am needing to automate some installation tasks. I first need to
determine
if there is already a version of a program installed. The program appears
in the Add/Remove Programs in control panel, and I know this is all stored
in the registry. But short of searching through the entire

registry,

I

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{9783

the
same

 

[Daniel Pratt]

Hi Adam,

I am needing to automate some installation tasks. I first need to determine
if there is already a version of a program installed.

<snip>

There are a lot of ways you can accomplish this, including using the
Microsoft Windows Installer Object Library (COM) or WMI. Since there are
already classes in .NET for WMI, I'll use that as an example. The
Win32_Product WMI class represents products installed on the machine. The
Win32_Product class has the product name, code, description, installed
location, etc., as well as methods to install, uninstall, advertise, etc the
product.

The first step is to determine the WMI "path" to the product you want to
uninstall. This routine will print out all the properties and the WMI path
for all installed products:

// need a "using System.Management;" somewhere
...
static void ListAllProducts()
{
SelectQuery allProductsQuery = new SelectQuery("Win32_Product");
ManagementObjectSearcher allProducts =
new ManagementObjectSearcher(allProductsQuery);

foreach(ManagementObject product in allProducts.Get())
{
foreach(PropertyData property in product.Properties)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0} = {1}", property.Name,
property.Value);
}
Console.WriteLine("Path = {0}", product.Path);
Console.WriteLine();
}
}

Once you have the path for the product you wish to uninstall, you can
uninstall with a method that might look like this:

static void UninstallProduct(string path)
{
ManagementObject product = new ManagementObject(path);

if ((product != null) && (product.Path.ClassName ==
"Win32_Product"))
{
object result = product.InvokeMethod("Uninstall", null);
Console.WriteLine("The Uninstall method result is {0}",
result.ToString());
}

}

A call to the UninstallProduct method above might look like this:

UninstallProduct(
"Win32_Product" +
".IdentifyingNumber=\"{F934F310-BFEB-40CA-801B-CC7136CEE35F}\""
+
",Name=\"ObjectSpaces Mapper Utility\"" +
",Version=\"1.0.0\"");

I split the path over several lines for readability. FYI, the
IdentifyingNumber property is the "Product Code". Also, the part of the path
that precedes the class name (something like "\\MachineName\root\cimv2:") is
unnecessary for anything on the local machine, so I omitted it.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Daniel