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jjb8297
Level 6

Uninstalling previous version of my app

Greetings,

I am using installshield2008 for the first time, and just recently got my first set up to install different editions of our software based on the Licence Key. Now I would like to check for previous versions of our software, and either uninstall it through the set up, or tell the user what to do and exit out gracefully.

I would like to go with both options so that I can present that to the powers that be at my current work place. The previous version of our software was built with Wise and not installshield, and I have been told that we don't have the installation for that any more or any idea on what the productguid is.

All I know is that for each edition it was installed in a folder with different names for each edition.

pro, exp, pro - mag are the respective folder names.

So my question(s) are as follow(s):
1. How to uninstall these previous editions from within my current installshield set up app that I built this week.

2. How do I detect the previous version of the software and ask the user to uninstall the previous version of our software, and then exit out of the set up that built this week. 🙂
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KathyMorey
Level 10

When you say you don't have the previous installs, I'm assuming you mean that you don't have the actual projects? Were they MSIs? If you have the MSI file you should be able to get the product code for each using a tool like Orca, then you can uninstall it in a custom action using the product code. You can also use the API to detect if a product has been installed with that product code (in a custom action).

Or, you can use AppSearch (through System Search view) to look for specific files in the directories you know might be there to determine which are already installed. To uninstall them, though, you would still have to know either the product code, the update code, or both. If you know the upgrade code, you can simply set an Upgrade Table item in your new install to uninstall the old one.

If the previous installs were built using Wise's version of InstallScript instead of MSI, then I don't know what to suggest...
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jjb8297
Level 6

Kathy,

All I know is that they were installed with Wise, as to whether or not they were an MSI or something else, I have no idea. I will see what I can do with the tools that you suggested. thanks. 🙂
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KathyMorey
Level 10

If any of the files have a .msi extension, they are viewable in Orca. If they are .exe files, then they might extract some embedded stuff, part of which may be an .msi file. Usually, you can find extracted files in the Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp directory somewhere, often in a subfolder by a GUID.

If you start the install and get to some kind of Welcome screen, you should then be able to look for the temp directory and save whatever files are in there for further examination.

Hope this helps!
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jjb8297
Level 6

KathyMorey wrote:
If any of the files have a .msi extension, they are viewable in Orca. If they are .exe files, then they might extract some embedded stuff, part of which may be an .msi file. Usually, you can find extracted files in the Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp directory somewhere, often in a subfolder by a GUID.

If you start the install and get to some kind of Welcome screen, you should then be able to look for the temp directory and save whatever files are in there for further examination.

Hope this helps!


If I have the directory structure of where the previous version is installed, and it has an uninstall file called unwise.exe (which I am assuming is the uninstall file, don't have here on my machine, so I am going by assuming and yes I know what that means 🙂 ).

Is it possible to kick off this unwise.exe from within my installation and if so, how does one do it?

The directory structure is

Program Files\SoftwareFolder

where SoftwareFolder (not actual folder name) is where the unwise.exe resides.
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