starscream Posted July 2, 2007 Posted July 2, 2007 Is it safe to use ranger package builder to remove previously installed software? I have a lot of software on machines that was installed before ranger was installed so it can't be removed from ranger. As ranger package builder creates an image before an install and then creates a second image after the install and then using the differences in files and registry entries etc to install software, can the same be done to uninstall software or is this bad practise. In theory is seems fine to do this. Am I correct or is there something I haven't thought of that could mess things us if I use this method to mass uninstall software? If I went ahead with this and was to run the package on all computers to remove a piece of software and one computer didnt have the software would it simply make no changes or could I end up in a mess? Any advice is greatly appreciated!
chrisa Posted July 2, 2007 Posted July 2, 2007 Yes it can be done. But don't I used it to remove some applications from 100 PC's a couple of summers ago and it stopped office working and all sorts of other things. In the end I had to ghost them all to fix the problem
starscream Posted July 2, 2007 Author Posted July 2, 2007 darn. Know any other way to mass remove software that wasn't installed using ranger or gpo?
chrisa Posted July 2, 2007 Posted July 2, 2007 The only other way I have found is to set on an apprentice Sorry not that I know of
starscream Posted July 2, 2007 Author Posted July 2, 2007 as in work experience person or something? heh
starscream Posted July 2, 2007 Author Posted July 2, 2007 It dosn't look like ranger allows you to uninstakll packages you have deployed either! That is a nightmare! I installed the iTalc client and it was fine ont he first few machines but on the rest is crashes badly and needs to be removed. Guess I need to manually do it!
chrisa Posted July 2, 2007 Posted July 2, 2007 From what I can remember of ranger, You just remove the package from the list and it will uninstall from the client, just like you would with active directory. It has been A while since I used ranger though
snrweb Posted July 2, 2007 Posted July 2, 2007 AFAIK the only way to remove Ranger Packages is with control panel - add/remove on the program. Deleting a package from the list does not remove it from machines. It only removes the package files from the server. Creating 'reverse packages' (IE snapshot 1 - removal - snapshot 2) is very dangerous and worse case scenario, could result in a negative universe that sucks you and all matter into it. Only GPO-deployed MSI's have an easy removal option (and they often leave stuff hanging around as well).
strawberry Posted July 2, 2007 Posted July 2, 2007 i sometimes use vnc managers to run a script to delete either key exe files ( to block access) or to execute uninstall files.
starscream Posted July 2, 2007 Author Posted July 2, 2007 AFAIK the only way to remove Ranger Packages is with control panel - add/remove on the program. Deleting a package from the list does not remove it from machines. It only removes the package files from the server. Creating 'reverse packages' (IE snapshot 1 - removal - snapshot 2) is very dangerous and worse case scenario, could result in a negative universe that sucks you and all matter into it. Only GPO-deployed MSI's have an easy removal option (and they often leave stuff hanging around as well). Yeah I learned this the hard way today No grey goo yet though either! But seriously, how come bad things can happen when creating reverse packages? I fail to see how different it is to uninstalling something. Am I being niaive?
strawberry Posted July 3, 2007 Posted July 3, 2007 my guess is that it doens't delete common files when it does uninstall.
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