KBEC-00035 - Manual Windows uninstall for ElectricCommander Server and Agent

Summary

A manual Windows uninstall of the ElectricCommander Server and Agents may be required when:

1. The installer user is different from the uninstall user.
2. The Windows registry keys are preventing ElectricCommander install or triggering an ElectricCommander upgrade.
3. Commander configuration data from previous installs prevents the installer from completing during the "could take 10 minutes" registry install.

Description

Occasionally on Windows, ElectricCommander is not displayed as installed software in the Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs on the agent host. The reason for this could be because Commander was installed as another user, or possibly because Commander has been installed/uninstalled repeatedly and the Windows installer database has gotten corrupted. If corruption occurs, Commander does not completely uninstall itself. The most common symptom is one or more Commander services still running after the uninstall. These running services interfere with future attempts to install ElectricCommander on the machine.

Approach

What is the general approach (strategy)?

• stop agent service
• delete the service
• delete ElectricCommander software directories
• remove the current Commander configuration
• remove the Window registry entry

Solutions

After you determine there is no agent to remove from Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs, follow these steps:

1. Stop all Commander agent services in cmd or Cygwin:

   
   sc stop CommanderAgent
   sc stop CommanderServer
   sc stop CommanderApache
   sc stop CommanderMySQL
   

2. Delete the service with the following commands:

   
   sc delete CommanderAgent
   sc delete CommanderServer
   sc delete CommanderApache
   sc delete CommanderMySQL
   

3. Delete or rename the ElectricCommander installed directories (typically the contents of C:\Program Files\Electric Cloud\ElectricCommander). Do not delete data files in workspaces!
4. Delete or rename the ElectricCommander configuration file configure.exe (typically found in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Electric Cloud\ElectricCommander).
5. Delete the ElectricCommander keys in the Windows Registry

By installer switch

In release 3.2 and after there is an installer undocumented command line argument "--cleanECRegistry". Try it first on the installer commandline to remove the registry keys.

By hand

1. From the Windows Run prompt, invoke "regedit" and navigate to any of the following registry keys (registry keys are unique to ElectricCommander). The registry keys list below is ordered with the most-likely-to-find key listed first:

   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{E1E048B1-D468-49DF-8A61-23A5813001FD
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{E0F91366-2FE0-4EBB-A2A1-5B20F9D5F2AB}
   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Features\66319F0E0EF2BBE42A1AB5029F5D2FBA
   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\66319F0E0EF2BBE42A1AB5029F5D2FBA
   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\UpgradeCodes\3A593D89B2D7874448D56C78C7111253
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Features\66319F0E0EF2BBE42A1AB5029F5D2FBA
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products\66319F0E0EF2BBE42A1AB5029F5D2FBA
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\UpgradeCodes\3A593D89B2D7874448D56C78C7111253
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Management\ARPCache\{E0F91366-2FE0-4EBB-A2A1-5B20F9D5F2AB}
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UpgradeCodes\3A593D89B2D7874448D56C78C7111253
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\66319F0E0EF2BBE42A1AB5029F5D2FBA
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-21-92094854-593444704-1842496168-1003\Products\66319F0E0EF2BBE42A1AB5029F5D2FBA
   

2. Right-click on the key and select "Delete".

At this point, enough cleanup has occurred so you can install ElectricCommander cleanly or if you are doing an ElectricCommander server upgrade, use the --recover option to continue the upgrade process.

Installer hangs because of previous configuration files

On window, by default, the Commander data file can be read by the installer and hang at the "this could take up to 10 minutes" portion of the install.

Rename the following directory and retry the Commander install again.

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Electric Cloud\ElectricCommander

Possible ACL remnant

If you receive errors when restarting the ElectricCommander Agent, you can check the servicerunner.log file. Some users have reported that the agent.crt file is not readable by the new user. Changing ownership (or adding a read filesystem privilege) can resolve the issue.