Uninstalling software using SCCM

Question

I've got a small number (~20) of test workstations in a lab which I'm using to test a software deployment using SCCM.

One of the things I'm looking to do is remove some of the pre-installed software from the vendor-supplied image. However, I can't seem to find a sensible way within SCCM to do this. I've gone down the road of creating a Task Sequence full of msiexec /X {GUID} commands, but after advertising that to the system group, nothing seems to happen and there's no way to check progress.

I appreciate in an ideal world I'd re-image everything, but the ability to automatically remove specific software not installed by SCCM is going to be quite an important feature later on.

What have I missed? Is there a better way of doing this?

Solution

For each product you wish to install you should check out its uninstall string here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. Not every product works with msiexec /x . Office 2010 and installshield applications are good examples.

For Installshield apps you will have to go through the painful process of creating an uninstall answer file by removing it manually first and then using that.

here is a good discussion on the problems for removing installshield applications.

Perhaps try uninstalling one application first via normal software distribution package and see if that works. Then you can start adding them to a task sequence. Bear in mind that a task sequence does not allow any user interaction.

Comments

[raja]

have you seen a diifference if you use msiexec /X myapp.msi?

[growse]

The problem is I don't have the MSI file for a lot of the preinstalled crap.