Windows Installer Uninstall

[Leanne Wittlin]

Accordingto Microsoft employee joscon in the Microsoft Technet post "Can you safely delete files in the %windir%\Installer directory?", it is not safe to delete C:\windows\installer or any files within it, and the post explains why as well.

This particular directory's job is to act as a cache location for Windows installer based applications. It holds stripped down versionsof the Windows installer data files. During application install,update of the application or application removal, this directory isused by the application to confirm the existence of previouslyinstalled items to determine the next steps the installer needs totake.

The overall idea that you really should not remove items in theWindows directory. We build and test our software based on theexistence of specific files and directories. When those files anddirectories don't exist, bad things can and will happen. However, thatis a generalization that usually upsets many people so let's be morespecific.

I always get the same error, a Windows Installer error, asking me for a DLL and NOD is not offering me any kind of information about what kind of DLL is this? where to find it? or how to solve the problem?

I am using NOD32 since the version 3.0... but sadly, since the version 7.0 we are having so much problems that I am considering to use a free utility such as Panda Cloud or Windows Defender and not suffering these problems anymore... unless there is an easy solution to install and uninstall the software without having to lose hours and hours...

... after going to Properties > Security on the C:\Users\x\AppData\Local\Temp folder and giving that Everyone the Full control permission, installers that previous had been failing now worked! Hooray! Since Everyone already had Read and Write access, I suspect that Full control also added a necessary Execute permission.

Maybe booting to safe mode, deleting the above mentioned folder and creating it from scratch would be a nicer solution as you'd avoid changing permissions which may not be secure if set up incorrectly.

Finally, after reading that article you told me, THANKS GOD, I was able to start the installer (after a whole day suffering)... seems to be the problem are msi files cannot be given administrator rights, and then, in some computers they cannot be installed or uninstalled by doing double click, they need administrator rights.

Anyway... I think is necessary to find a solution to make the installer start, without having to type special commands... because not all people have that patience, and having a lot of free antiviruses online or even the windows defender, I guess many frustrated users would uninstall the NOD32 and go to other free solution.

Well, it's clear this is something about permissions... and it is clear this is happening in some computers and other computers don't have this problem... because I took the same msi file to other computer, just for testing purposes, and I was able to start the installer just doing double click...

Yes, I am prompted and even I tried the set the UAC off so any program would be able to make changes without having to ask for permissions. No effect. The msi file don't run, because it has no administrator rights. Today I have installed sucessfully NOD32 8.0 using the command line, and doing what I said, executing CMD with administrator rights and typing msiexec /i eav_nt64_esl.msi

So the problem I think is affecting right now ESET, because not all people have the skills to type those commands, many people just browse the ESET website and want to download the installer and install it in a few clicks. When those users get the error, they are discouraged and try other antivirus...

Regarding the installation, it's impossible by doing double click on the MSI file, the only way is the one I described before, with administrator rights on the command line and typing msiexec /i eav_nt64_esl.msi

Seems to be there is a miss configuration or particular scenario in which the MSI file fails, and this scenerio happen under normal Windows configurations, because the problem is happening in two of my computers.

Actually with the 360 Total Security running out there and offering for free a lot of virus search engines from many antiviruses like Avira o Bitdefender, I think the actual situation (just an opinion) shouldn't complicate the installation / uninstall process to the curious user that want to install the software... so I think ESET should solve this problem soon. Just my two cents about this.

In fact, you are the only user who has ever reported this issue and everyone else was able to install ESET products fine. Instead of using an msi installer, I'd recommend running Live Installer which is downloaded by default and can fix many issues with system misconfiguration that would otherwise cause the installer to fail.

As for disabling UAC, I don't think simply disabling it would solve permission issues, quite the contrary. Once upon a time I ran into this issue (not sure if it was with ESET or another product) and since I didn't want to be bothered by UAC prompts and disabling UAC caused other permission issues, I had to resort to reinstalling the OS as there must have been something terribly wrong with UAC. I've found this issue to be reported with other software as well, for instance hxxp://superuser.com/questions/545569/disabling-uac-on-windows-8-causing-issues-with-installations.

You could try re-enabling UAC to see if it makes a difference. Once the msi installer is run with elevated administrator rights, it shouldn't cause any permission issues. If UAC doesn't work correctly as expected (being enabled or disabled), issues are expected to occur.

Sorry I don't understand very well your recommendation. You recommend me to run Live installer to run msi files with administrator rights? Please, could you tell me how may I do that? should I install something or download something?

Regarding what is happening in my system, it's clear something happen in certain configurations that stop to install the msi files, so I think I should provide my system information to the ESET engineers, so they can make the install process more easily to the users. I'm willing to help, but no one from ESET contacted me before.

UAC is activated right now. I had it always activated except when I was trying to install the msi files, I disabled the UAC a few minutes just for testing purposes, but yes, right now is completely activated. UAC is very necessary to maintain the PC safe.

I know the live installer download the antivirus from Internet and the MSI don't require Internet connection, what I don't understand very well is why ESET is offering the offline installer in MSI and the Live Installer in EXE?

The Live Installer for NOD32 is available here. However AFAIK it is also using Windows Installer (like I described above), but it has to be started with elevated rights right at the start, so this may also solve the problem, because it does nearly the same as your workaround with starting Windows Installer as an admin.

However your issue seems to be related to Windows Installer (more than it is related to ESET), so have you tried any other MSI file which requires elevated privileges (which should be nearly every installer, because nearly every software installs in %programfiles%)?

But back to the ESET installation: Maybe there are some logs of the installation process. AFAIK they will be automatically created in %temp% (they should have the format "Msi*.log"). If not then you can also follow this instructions to enable logging and then reproduce the issue.

I have an installer (created with WiX) which installs certain files and folders. However, when running the installed application, this creates some folders and copies some files into it. These files and folders are not removed on uninstall.

This does create a record in the registry with the install location, but I'm not sure how to adapt this code to making note of the 'public' directory and removing it - I don't know where the util:RemoveFolderEx should go either (inside which component)

If you can derive the path from other values you may have set during installation that Windows Installer will preserve for you, such as ARPINSTALLLOCATION, then you can adjust the above implementation to get what you need without having to create your own registry keys.

Since you mention upgrade code, it must mean that you are talking about an MSI file (Windows Installer). As stated by others such an uninstall is normally performed auto-magically by a properly authored MSI package - it is referred to as a major upgrade - which is essentially an uninstall of the existing version of a product and then the install of the newest version.

The Upgrade Table of the MSI being installed will specify what existing packages on the box will be uninstalled before the new version is installed. In theory you can uninstall any number of existing installations. You can even uninstall a competitive product if you are mad as a hatter. Frankly, and astonishingly, I have never tried to uninstall multiple products during one major upgrade - it is rarely called for. In most cases you uninstall a single, existing product and then install your latest version.

If you don't want to uninstall via msiexec.exe, then you can find a myriad of ways to invoke an MSI uninstall here:Uninstalling an MSI file from the command line without using msiexec.

UPDATE: I guess I forgot the obvious, you can uninstall directly via MSI API automation. In the script below we get all products sharing the same upgrade code and then uninstall them in sequence.

Note that when run silently you should run with admin rights since the UAC may be suppressed and then the uninstall will usually fail (permission denied). Because of this the below script runs the uninstall interactively - allowing UAC prompting and elevation.

And if it isn't obvious: running this script will uninstall Orca! I use this product as a sample because it is quick to install again (hints on finding the installer quick if you need to towards bottom here - search for "orca"):

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