Software Deployment

By design, the MSI will only remove folders it installs. If you think about it, there is no way that the MSI could know what folders and files are created by something external to it.

One course of action is to create a custom action which executes a batch file that removes the files/folders when you do an uninstall. Of course, you need to know what folders/files are created by the application to do this.

nmi

You need to use the 'RemoveFile' table.

Below is an example of this that will delete all the files in the 'Data' folder and then delete the 'Data' folder itself when the 'myComponent001' is uninstalled:

FileKey Component FileName DirProperty InstallMode

FileKey001 myComponent001 * Data 2
FileKey002 myComponent001 Data 2

Got it? Make sense?

[8D] Keep cool [8D]

By design, the MSI will only remove folders it installs. If you think about it, there is no way that the MSI could know what folders and files are created by something external to it.

One course of action is to create a custom action which executes a batch file that removes the files/folders when you do an uninstall. Of course, you need to know what folders/files are created by the application to do this.

Yes, I know that, and I'm completely aware of the folders that the software creates. I was thinking of making a custom action to execute during uninstallation, but I don't know how to schedule it. I know how to schedule a custom action during installation, but not during uninstall. How do you do that?

You need to use the 'RemoveFile' table.

Below is an example of this that will delete all the files in the 'Data' folder and then delete the 'Data' folder itself when the 'myComponent001' is uninstalled:

FileKey Component FileName DirProperty InstallMode

FileKey001 myComponent001 * Data 2
FileKey002 myComponent001 Data 2



Got it? Make sense?

Hmm.. Not really.. As you can see, I'm a newbie (I hate to admit it, but it's true). Could you give me a more detailed explanation about that? It looks interesting.

OK, the first thing to deleting a folder on uninstallation of the application is to delete all the files within the folder first (if the folder is not empty, the MSI can't delete the folder.)

eg: FileKey001 myComponent001 * Data 2

Then, once the folder is empty you can then delete the folder.

eg: FileKey002 myComponent001 Data 2



For you to implement this in your MSI, you need to find out two things: a component, and the Directory name in the Directory table.

I hope I've explained things better this time. Let me know...

Thank you for your reply, Mr B. However, I don't think I can do that with my setup. The software that I'm trying to repackage creates files in the %appdata% folder on first run. So I don't think it's in the components of my msi.

What I was trying to do is run an exe that will do this

RD /Q /S "%APPDATA%\My_App"

How can I schedule it to run on uninstall? I searched MSDN library and saw the REMOVE property. But I don't understand it's use. Do I have to schedule the exe and simply add the REMOVE=ALL condition? Will that make the custom action to run during uninstallation?

Thank you.

[8D]

Ahhhh, that makes it a little bit more difficult.

Because the files are stored in the users profile, it is really needed to be deleted on uninstallation?

If so, what I would probably use is an ActiveSetup script. On uninstallation, I would write the neccessary registry keys so that when any other user logs onto the computer this ActiveSetup will run and delete the files/folders.

ActiveSetup is already explained on this site, so do a search.