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Uninstalling Binary registry values
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:42 am
by ken rentz
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?
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 11:19 am
by Tinus
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.
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 1:28 pm
by ken rentz
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.
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 2:39 pm
by ken rentz
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
Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 3:31 am
by Tinus
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
Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:49 am
by MichaelNesmith
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!
Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:18 pm
by Justin Pava
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...)
Bug fix for uninstall binary values in registry?
Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 8:11 am
by ortwin.tischler
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.