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 | | From: | Philip Hofstetter | | Subject: | Uninstalling User Specific Data | | Date: | Thu, 16 Dec 2004 13:25:27 -0100 |
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 | Hello,
I have a general setup related question which ist not Inno specific:
It's about personal user data and settings.
I have my installer configured to write some presets to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE which are later copied by the application to the same
Key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER where further changes by the user are saved.
Furthermore, the application is creating plenty of data in
{userappdata}, most of which not being of any value to the user when the
application is uninstalled.
So, my question is: What is to do on uninstall to get rid of those files
and the settings in HKEY_CURRENT_USER?
I mean: The application is (mostly) installed by an Administrator and
later used by individual users, so there are quite some user-specific
files/registry keys in the profile of different users. The question is:
How to get rid of that on uninstall?
While I could write a small .exe searching all profile directories and
the registry, I hope that maybe, there is something in Inno that helps
with this. Or have I to do some different approach?
I mean (in the Example of the data in HKEY_CURRENT_USER) this:
Root: HKCU; Subkey: [Key]; Flags: uninsdeletekey
certainly does not help, as the uninstallation is done by the
administrator, not by the individual users.
What should I do?
Currently, I'm keeping those User-Settings around, but I'd really like
to find a way to clean them up.
Many thanks for your help
Philip
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| | From: | Jordan Russell | | Subject: | Re: Uninstalling User Specific Data | | Date: | Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:30:47 -0600 |
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| "Philip Hofstetter" wrote in message
news:cps5sv$1ul$1@news.jrsoftware.org...
> I mean: The application is (mostly) installed by an Administrator and
> later used by individual users, so there are quite some user-specific
> files/registry keys in the profile of different users. The question is:
> How to get rid of that on uninstall?
You can't. See http://www.jrsoftware.org/iskb.php?deluserkeys
--
Jordan Russell
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| | From: | Philip Hofstetter | | Subject: | Re: Uninstalling User Specific Data | | Date: | Thu, 16 Dec 2004 20:51:33 -0100 |
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| Hello,
Jordan Russell wrote:
> You can't. See http://www.jrsoftware.org/iskb.php?deluserkeys
I see. Thanks for the informative article and sorry to have asked a FAQ.
I always hoped it would not happen to me ;-)
While I don't like the situation I see there is nothing I could do to
fix it. My problem is Administrators of professionally managed computers
complaining about unclean uninstallations. But they really should know
better ;-)
I'd really whish there being a solution - be it just for myself: To save
time, I always copy over my profile when switching to a new machine
(it's even on it's own NTFS-partition mounted to c:\Documents and
settings\username. so I can copy over a clean image to the system
partition from time to time while still keeping all my settings intact
and never worrying about overwriting personal data) and I'm beginning to
get concerned about all the stuff lingering in the profile folder.
Would there be a solution to this problem, the uninstallers could remove
that stuff on uninstall and there would at least be a chance of the
users profile being kept clean over the years.
Whishful thinking I now know...
But it's quickly getting off-topic, so
EOT.
Thanks again
Philip
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| | From: | Gavin Lambert | | Subject: | Re: Uninstalling User Specific Data | | Date: | Fri, 17 Dec 2004 11:25:47 +1300 |
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| Philip Hofstetter wrote:
> Would there be a solution to this problem, the uninstallers could remove
> that stuff on uninstall and there would at least be a chance of the
> users profile being kept clean over the years.
It's possible to write a little utility that gets *installed* when you
uninstall, and will wait for each user to login and then clean up their
profile. Once it has cleaned every user's profile (or at least all of
the users that actually ran the software), then it can uninstall itself.
Possible, I repeat, but nobody does it (or at least nobody I know of,
not even myself). Both because it's tricky to get right (you have to
keep track of which users you've installed stuff to, and which you've
uninstalled already; you also have to be very careful not to f*#@ their
system up), and because users would naturally regard anything that got
installed during uninstallation as highly suspicious.
All of this has led to an environment where it's considered "normal" to
have to do a clean reinstall of Windows every few months/years. Yay.
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| | From: | Philip Hofstetter | | Subject: | Re: Uninstalling User Specific Data | | Date: | Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:38:45 -0100 |
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| Hi,
Gavin Lambert wrote:
> It's possible to write a little utility that gets *installed* when you
> uninstall, and will wait for each user to login and then clean up their
> profile. Once it has cleaned every user's profile (or at least all of
> the users that actually ran the software), then it can uninstall itself.
I thought of exactly the same when writing my previous post, but...
> Possible, I repeat, but nobody does it (or at least nobody I know of,
> not even myself). Both because it's tricky to get right (you have to
> keep track of which users you've installed stuff to, and which you've
> uninstalled already; you also have to be very careful not to f*#@ their
> system up), and because users would naturally regard anything that got
> installed during uninstallation as highly suspicious.
.... all those reasons sprung to my mind too, so I did not even begin to
write this idea down.
> All of this has led to an environment where it's considered "normal" to
> have to do a clean reinstall of Windows every few months/years. Yay.
I really don't want to do that. The System: Yes. My profile. No. It just
takes too much time to reconfigure everything. Maybe, these christmas
days, I'll find the time to clean up manually, what's sticking in my
profile which is now nearly 3 years old (on the third computer in sequence).
Philip
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| | From: | Gavin Lambert | | Subject: | Re: Uninstalling User Specific Data | | Date: | Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:17:40 +1300 |
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| Philip Hofstetter wrote:
> I really don't want to do that. The System: Yes. My profile. No. It just
> takes too much time to reconfigure everything. Maybe, these christmas
> days, I'll find the time to clean up manually, what's sticking in my
> profile which is now nearly 3 years old (on the third computer in
> sequence).
I don't do it very often myself (I've been running with a single Windows
install for about 2.5 years now, and it's only starting to get
overweight now), but I usually do clear out my profile as well. I do
keep copies of everything (including a full text dump of the Registry),
though, just in case.
I usually find that those tools that I use most often are fairly easy to
reconfigure (sometimes just by copying individual program settings
across from my old setup, sometimes doing it manually)... most of the
time, though, I end up discovering that I didn't really need those tools
anyway. So my system gets a bit lighter :)
Or at least it would, if I ever deleted anything. I'm a bit of a
packrat -- I tend to just add extra hard drives rather than deleting any
old data/apps, even if I haven't used them for ten years or so ;)
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