Uninstalling custom runtimes

[jessican]

Hi! So my installer includes the installation of some custom runtimes.
Is there any way for me to make it so that these runtimes are also uninstalled when the application is uninstalled? and if so, how ?
Thanks!

[FrancescoT]

Dear jessican,

are your custom rtms installers based on Windows Installer Engine?

Regards

[jessican]

Yes they are! For ex: one of them is Microsoft Server Speech Platform Runtime

[FrancescoT]

Dear jessican,

it's not recommended to uninstall a third party runtimes when uninstalling your package. This because it may be used by other applications which may be installed successively to your package installation.

If you want to take the risk anyway, you can query the target system registry to retrieve the value of "UnInstallString".

This information is stored under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\<PRODUCTCODE>
or (if it's a native 32 bit package installed on a x64 system)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\<PRODUCTCODE>

*where <PRODUCTCODE> is the GUID assigned to the specific third party product. This is generally the same and identical with different version of the same product.

To find the <PRODUCTCODE> you need to manually search through the registry of a system where the package is already installed.

Finally, you can use the "UnInstallString" with "Run Program" or eventually with "(un)Install MSI package" (if a MSI package).

Hope this helps you.

Regards

[jessican]

Thanks so much Francesco, that makes sense - I think I'll go with your recommendation of not uninstalling runtimes.

Thanks once again !