Best practices..... uninstalling software

(imported topic written by ltd200991)

Hi Everyone,

We are just about to start using BigFix as our primary deployment tool for software distribution & patching… Just wondering if anyone has any tips or best practices used when it comes to “uninstalling” software… Basically anytime we deploy software our implementation procedures require us to have a back out, and thats usually the ability to uninstall or remove software installed. If you need to uninstall software do you have to create a new fixlet?

Example:

Fixlet: Install Microsoft Office XP (installing MSI silently)

Fixlet: Uninstall Microsoft Office XP (uninstalling MSI silently)

thanks!

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hello and welcome to the forum,

It really depends on how the software was packaged. The key is finding the command line options for silent uninstall.

For MSIs, it is pretty easy because there is a standard way to uninstall MSIs silently. For other packaging tools like custom InstallShield packages, it can be much harder.

Often for pre-packaged pieces of software, there are websites that collect how to uninstall them (like appdeploy.com), but sometimes you need to do some research.

Ben

(imported comment written by ltd200991)

Hi Ben,

thanks for your response… We’ve been using other tools to deploy, so uninstalling scripts/commands isn’t so much the question but was just more curious to see if there was a way to be able to uninstall without having fixlets for each application packaged…

(imported comment written by BenKus)

You could build a single Task that can take in an action parameter and then uninstall the application… Here is an example with MSIs…

http://forum.bigfix.com/viewtopic.php?pid=14493#p14493

Ben