Uninstall issues using Group Policy

sdeschenes · Post by **sdeschenes** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:33 am

I am using Group Policy for deploying my products to client machines on a domain. I can successfully deploy the product, but when I try to uninstall it, I receive the message from the Application Event Viewer that the product is being removed. When I inspect the client machine, the product, all the application files, desktop and start menu shortcuts and registry entries still remain. Even the Add/Remove entry doesn't get removed in ARP.

Now in order to determine the cause of this, I created a new Basic Setup that just installs the product executable, desktop and start menu shortcuts. I used the Group Policy wizard to wrap the installer into an MSI package. I was able to deploy the product and uninstall it successfully. But when I added some code for handling multiple instances, the product deploys, but it won't uninstall properly; product app, shortcuts, registry keys, Add/Remove entry are left behind.

So just for kicks, I created the Install Multiple Instances sample installer, without any modifications and deployed it using Group Policy. The deployment and un-installation worked just fine. Once I made some edits to the section of code dealing with multiple instances (commenting out a couple lines), the MSI package again doesn't uninstall properly.

I don't know if the Multiple Instance code that I add to my installer is the source of my problem because I have created two plain setups, one with and one without the Multiple Instance code and everything works fine. But if I add the Multiple Instance code to my setup or make any edits to the code in the Install Multiple Instances sample, then the MSI package "craps" out (for lack of a better term) when it is removed.

Any insight into this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Scott Deschenes

neillans · Post by **neillans** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 3:50 pm

Interesting one! Can you send us your modified project?

Have you tried enabling verbose logging to see waht is failing?

sdeschenes · Post by **sdeschenes** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:19 am

Here is the modified project. It is the Install Multiple Instances project. Notice I commented out the message box, the "if TRANSFORM equals YES" statement and the "if TRANSFORM equals CANCEL" statement. I only left the Transform Instance command.

File Attached:

My Project.exe

neillans · Post by **neillans** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 4:48 pm

Can you send us the project files so we can debug?