Uninstalling products on Windows using the installation wizard


Use the installation utility to select and uninstall individual products. All components associated with those products will also be uninstalled unless they are required by another installed product. 

If the installation utility detects hidden or orphaned components on your computer, an additional page is displayed during the uninstallation that gives you the option to remove all of these components. Orphaned components are product components that were originally installed as non-selectable required product components during a previous installation, but are no longer required by any products on your computer. 

If you select to uninstall all products and any orphaned components, an additional page is displayed that gives you the option to uninstall the uninstallation utility.

This topic provides the following procedures: 

To uninstall products, orphaned components, and the uninstallation utility

  1. From the Uninstall directory in your BMC product installation directory, double-click uninstall.exe to launch the uninstallation utility.

    Note

    You can optionally launch the uninstallation utility by selecting Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs and in the Add/Remove Programs Properties dialog box, in Windows NT environments, double-clicking on BMC Software Tools, and in Windows 2000 environments, selecting BMC Software Tools and clicking Change/Remove.

    The Welcome page is displayed. Click Next.

  2. Select the installation directory from which you want to remove a product. Click Next.
  3. Enter pre-uninstallation product information.
    The pages displayed during this phase of the uninstallation may present only the information that you should know prior to uninstalling the products or may require you to enter information that the uninstallation utility will use to perform validation before the uninstallation process begins.
    The pages displayed will vary depending on the products installed on your computer, and for some groups of products, no such pages will be displayed.
  4. Select the product or products that you want to uninstall. Click Next.
  5. (Optional) If the uninstallation utility detects any orphaned components, select to remove these components from your computer.
  6. Enter any additional requested information in the displayed pages.
    The information that you are required to enter depends on the products that you are uninstalling; for example, you may be required to enter account information, such as a user name and password, to uninstall the selected products. These pages may also display information that you need to know after the products are uninstalled, such as whether a reboot is required after the uninstallation is complete.
  7. (Optional ) Select to uninstall the uninstallation utility.
    All files and directories will be removed except those used during uninstallation, such as thorinst.exebwcpwk.dll, and GlobalC language files. Log files, configuration files, user-modified files, and files created as a result of running scripts during the installation are also retained.
  8. Review your selections and click Uninstall.
    After the uninstallation is complete, the utility displays the status of the uninstallation and provides a link to the log file. 

    Alternatively, you can use the uninstallation utility to uninstall all products and orphaned components as described in the previous procedure, then use the following procedure to uninstall the uninstallation utility, log files, and configuration files from the specified product installation directory.

To uninstall all products, uninstallation files, log files, and configuration files

Note

You must reboot your computer after you perform this procedure.

  1. Uninstall each product and any orphaned components as described in To uninstall products, orphaned components, and the uninstallation utility. Do not uninstall the uninstallation utility.
  2. Locate the uninstall-all.ctl file in the BMC Products Installation directory\Uninstall\Install\instdatadirectory.

    Warning

    Do not use the uninstall-all.ctl file to uninstall products from a root product installation directory, such as C:\. Doing so may unintentionally uninstall products other than BMC products.

  3. Open a command prompt.
  4. Change to the BMC Products Installation directory\Uninstall\ Install\ instbin directory.
  5. Enter the following command:

    thorinst.exe -uninstall BMC products installation directory\Uninstall\Install\instdata\ uninstall-all.ctl -log path to log file -output path to output log file

    The options -log and -output let you specify a location for a standard log file and an output log file. The standard log file contains all installation status information, and the output log file contains messages on the progress of the installation that are normally sent to standard output. The path to log file and path to output log file variables can be any valid path and file name (with a .txt extension) that you specify. If the path includes spaces, you must enclose it with quotes.
    For example, if C:\Program Files\BMC Software is your product installation directory, you would change to C:\Program Files\BMC Software\Uninstall\ Install\instbin and enter the following:
    thorinst.exe -uninstall "C:\Program Files\BMC Software\Uninstall\Install\instdata\uninstall-all.ctl" -log Z:\NetworkLogs\MyLogs.txt -output Z:\NetworkLogs\MyLogs.out
     This procedure removes all installation files and directories. The files used to perform the uninstallation will be marked for deletion and will be removed when the computer is rebooted.