Uninstalling Binary registry values

ken rentz · Post by **ken rentz** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:42 am

When testing our uninstall, I noticed that a number of registry entries were not being uninstalled. Many of them were ones that the program created after install, so that's to be expected. I then performed an install followed immediately by an uninstall, and noticed that all of the REG_BINARY values remained. Am I doing something wrong?

Tinus · Post by **Tinus** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 11:19 am

Ken,

Windows Installer will only remove the keys created during install.
If keys already exits they will not be removed on uninstall.
If the keys are created later on they will not be removed on uninstall.

You may want to create these binary keys during install with default values
- or -
use the Delete Registry command which is not based on Windows Installer.

Look for "Delete Registry" in the help for more information.

ken rentz · Post by **ken rentz** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 1:28 pm

These particular keys are created at install. For historical reasons, our program uses about 250 registry entries. Of these entries, 9 of them are binary. After the uninstall, all of the binary entries are intact, while the rest of the entries are removed. I did not run any programs between the install and uninstall, so nothing should be modified. I'm currently trying to create a test case in order to see if I can reproduce this outside of the main installer.

ken rentz · Post by **ken rentz** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 2:39 pm

I've made an install that does nothing but install the bulk of our registry entries, and on my system it does not uninstall the binary values.

I'm still looking at trimming the test case down, but so far I can't see what I could be doing.

File Attached:

New Project.mpr

Tinus · Post by **Tinus** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 3:31 am

Ken,
you are right,

I was able to reproduce the problem. Binary values are not removed, text and int values are removed.

Michael, can you please verify this?

File Attached:

My Win32 Setup.zip

MichaelNesmith · Post by **MichaelNesmith** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:49 am

I created a test setup with all types of registry values. All were correctly uninstalled, except the binary value. I then inspected the MSI created by InstallAware, and the MSI has correct flags for all the installed components (none of them are permanent). In fact the flags are all identical for the MSI components. So I'm not quite sure why MSI is not uninstalling the binary value!

Justin Pava · Post by **Justin Pava** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:18 pm

Michael,

Sorry about the necro, but I didn't see this mentioned elsewhere. Was there ever any understanding or resolution as to why Binary reg keys alone were not removed on uninstall?

(Why yes, I DID just run into this...)

ortwin.tischler · Post by **ortwin.tischler** » Wed May 14, 2008 8:11 am

MichaelNesmith wrote:I created a test setup with all types of registry values. All were correctly uninstalled, except the binary value. I then inspected the MSI created by InstallAware, and the MSI has correct flags for all the installed components (none of them are permanent). In fact the flags are all identical for the MSI components. So I'm not quite sure why MSI is not uninstalling the binary value!

I´ve the same problem with the actual version InstallAware7 (the bug ist old). Is there a bug fix or workaround for this issue.

Uninstalling Binary registry values

Uninstalling Binary registry values

Bug fix for uninstall binary values in registry?