Unable to uninstall the application which is installed using wix installer

Question

I have used wix installer to create an installer for my c# application.

Installation happened fine, but I am not able to uninstall the app

Answer 1

Cross-Link: How to clean out broken uninstalls.

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Microsoft FixIt: Before trying anything else, perhaps try the Microsoft FixIt tool to see if you can get rid of any dangling installations. If unsuccessful check further down for other approaches.

Debugging & Logging: Next fix your custom action in the package based on custom action debugging (I recommend the Advanced Installer MSI CA debugging video, it is quick and a good "hello debugger" session) and gathering logging information.

Countermeasure: Finally, maybe add a property to suppress the custom action from running as described here ("Adding Condition" section).

• This is the simplest idea I know of to suppress custom actions from running on uninstall - you just set the property involved when needed to suppress the custom action if it crashes. >
• I would use it for all my custom actions - in fact - so I can suppress them all (or maybe one by one) - especially for uninstall scenarios where you run into "catch 22" situations (unable to install, upgrade or uninstall due to custom action bugs).

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Dangling Installations: In order to detect all related, dangling installations (if any), you can use this approach: Unable to uninstall program from WiX created MSI (enumerate all products with the same upgrade code).

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I will add these links for now in case you find that dangling version:

• wix - custom action dialogbox on silent uninstall of application
• I screwed up, how can I uninstall my program?

When trying to remove an MSI which crashes on uninstall, the central question is how many computers are involved? If it is just one, then hacking the cached MSI database may be acceptable, otherwise you should create a patch package to fix the uninstall sequence and then trigger uninstall the normal way.

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Links:

• Throwing in one more link: WIX does not uninstall older version. It is possible to have installations per-user or per-machine.