1 reply to this topic

[dzid]

While creating the installer (Basic Msi project), the InstallShield can automatically generate a shortcut for the uninstallation of the application, which will be started with the key from the register (msiexec /x {xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx} ).

The second uninstallation variant is possible, if you start the uninstallation again and select Remove there.

If a user worked with the application and this application was saving its data or the user’s data to the directory where this application had been installed, then this directory would not be deleted during the uninstallation, because the directory contains the application data.

The question is, how can we make the dialogue window with a checkbox, saying something like “delete user’s data” appear during the uninstallation from the shortcut or during the second launch of the InstallShield (to remove) and, correspondingly, delete the user’s data if selected or not delete if selected not to remove.


Thank you!

[Stefan Krueger]

The problem is that in both cases the uninstall runs in "Basic UI" mode and therefore doesn't display any of your authored dialogs. So you would have to display this dialog using a custom action in the Execute sequence, which is not recommended and may prevent a silent uninstall. To avoid this you could make an uninstall shortcut to an exe that will run your setup with UI.

One cause for this problem is that you are saving user data in the program directory which you shouldn't do. These files should be in the user's data folder. It's up to you whether you want to give an option to automatically delete these files, or just leave them behind. Users could then delete them using Explorer if they no longer need them. It depends on your application. Imagine Microsoft Office asking you whether it should delete all Word documents during uninstall. A very dangerous option!