I'm sure I'm not the first person who's done it - create an MSI, install it, works great. Uninstall it, falls over and can't get rid of the thing.
This pretty much leaves you to remove things the old fashion way. The only downside is that you still have the thing sitting in your Add/Remove programs list, which you can't delete.
This is where you have to fire up regedit.exe, and navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{your program}
and blow it away from there. That all works fine if you didn't use windows installer. But if you did, you'll check add/remove programs and see that not only is it still in there, it now doesn't have any change/remove buttons.
Missed something. Back in the registry, navigate:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\{your product}
and get rid of it there too.
Installation / uninstallation could be regarded as the most important part of your program. Make sure you spend a decent amount of time testing & ensuring that your application installs and uninstalls correctly, otherwise users will neither have the inclination nor the ability to install future versions.
posted @ Thursday, November 01, 2007 8:22 AM