Software Deployment

There are several ways to do this but unless you edited the .exe by say ..snapshoting the installation.. it can cause problems after you install it.
Some of the pitfalls of a forced installation are :

Overwriting shared dll’s ocx’s etc
Leaving old files on machine
Screwing up drive mappings in hard coded unc paths
It will also overwrite saved usr info such as DB’s and files
The list goes on..

If you had created an msi of the old program it would be simple to ask the msi to uninstall when detected on the machine ( pre requisite is in the msi script) But other than writing a Vbs. or kix script to uninstall the application using the Windows install monitor custom action then all I can’t suggest any other way sorry.

I dont have to worry about a few of the things you mentioned because it is just a viewer program, it is not used to create anything. -

Screwing up drive mappings in hard coded unc paths & It will also overwrite saved usr info such as DB’s and files - no drive mappings/unc/user created files

I am fairly new here, & I can tell you none of the previous installs were done in any sort of unattended/standard way, thats why there are so many different versions of this program installed, & even diff patch levels of those versions. This is why I want to do a clean uninstall of ALL of those & roll out the pbvv3 which will be the new standard across the board. I dont even know if these previous programs are even msi based files, much less how you would actually go about running an uninstall of an msi based file if they are msi based as ive never done it before, is the command line like this? -

msiexec.exe /x {GUID_OF_OLD_MSI} REMOVE="ALL" /qn

if thats the case i guess all i have to do is pray the previous installers were msi, & that i can dig up the guid of all the different versions...heh... I guess just opening the old program msi files in orca & doing a search on guid would be too easy to work eh? lemme do some more digging...

Ok, I think i figured out some of what i was looking for -

for Powered By Volo View 3.0 (build 996) the command would be (yea, i know this is the product i want to get installed, but hey, it works nicely so i thought i would share it for when pbvv4 comes out)
msiexec /x {0576A3D0-0000-0409-0000-491C453655D7} REMOVE="ALL" /qn


for Volo(TM) View Express 2 (Build 644) the command would be
msiexec /x {1ECD6EC8-7BB2-4CD5-A384-BAA371BC4D21} REMOVE="ALL" /qn


Does you have the list of the guid of the other voloview* viewer products? If you have the .msi for them you can get the number i need by using ORCA (or any other msi editor) and going to its under orca/properties/product code. I dont have any of the other .msi files, & i doubt they are downloadable from autodesk anymore, so if you could help out I would be appreciative since you might have older versions archived somewhere.

Sounds good to me , you could try and look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
after you uninstall the first 2 apps to see if there is guid for the older version (s)

The method FiveTide described will get you the GUID no problem.


Was voloview express 1 an msi product? if not i found a moethod for removing old installshield products remotely.

you need to go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall registry keys and find the key for the product you want to remove.

in the uninstallpath or uninstallstring key you will see something like this:

C:\WINDOWS\UNINST.EXE -f"D:\Program Files\Adobe\Premiere 6.0\DeIsL1.isu" -c"D:\Program Files\Adobe\Premiere 6.0\Uninst.dll"

if you take the firsy bit ( UNINST.EXE -f"D:\Program Files\Adobe\Premiere 6.0\DeIsL1.isu" ) it can be used to call a remote silent uninstall by adding the switches -a -m , eg for acrobat 4 or 5 call:

"IsUninst.exe" -a -m -f"C:\Progra~1\Common~1\Adobe\Acroba~1.0\NT\Uninst.isu"