Software Deployment

Hi Lane,
are you talking about the shortcut to the uninstall command?
Or is there an shortcut installed with this old, which gives an error when uninstalling?

I assume the first case. Use msiexec /x {Productcode} to uninstall. You find the productcode in the uninstall registry section:
'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall'
Search for your app there.

Hope this helps.
Regards, Nick

Nope, we're using "msiexec /x [guid]" but because the shortcuts installed previously were pointing to one of our servers that no longer exist, the uninstall is trying to reference the servers for whatever reason and this causes an error. The uninstall then aborts.

I want to be able to ignore the errors and complete the uninstall.


~Lane

Hi Lane,
do you have the old app still around? Could you place it on a new machine, to which you could point your machines then?
Have a look at the following Registry-key and search for your app in there.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products
Each product lies in a subkey with a <Packed GUID>, in their you find a key 'SourceList', you should find the path to your old server there.
If you modify this path to one which is available, the unistall should work.

Another road would be, to isolate the sequences (most likely CustomActions) in the 'InstallExecuteSequence' of the questioned app. The MSI lies in '%Systemroot%\Installer.

Hope this gets you on the right track.
Regards, Nick

Nope, that is not related. It's not having a problem finding the old package. The problem is a shortcut to run the application that is pointing to an old server share/location. For example:

To replicate the problem, you would capture or create an MST for a vendor app. In it you would create a shortcut to a PDF and that shortcut points to \\server\share to open the PDF. Now, the server goes away and you want to uninstall the app. It will error and abort the uninstall because it will try to reference the PDF on the server which no longer exists.


~Lane

There might be a way to do this that's much much easier, but off the top of my head you could patch the install first (MSP) to remove the shortcuts, then uninstall it.