Has anyone been able to uninstall the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP?

When I try to uninstall it, I get a dialog that offers a choice between Repair or Reinstall and Uninstall. If I select uninstall, however, it just asks me if I want to instal the tools for Visual Studio, and doesn't actually uninstall anything. Has anyone else had this problem?

Fun fact: I also can't install the new CTP now, because it wants me to remove the old one first.

I had no issues with the one I had to remove to put the update for rtm on.

I ran into troubles uninstalling it too but got rid of it in the end. The installer is very picky about uninstallation, it requires all of the files it installed to be there first, so run repair first and let it do its thing. Then uninstall.

Don't uninstall any components yourself (even though the CTP Refresh installer tells you too). Just run repair and then uninstall on the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP first.

Well, it took me an afternoon, but I finally got the refresh running. In the end, I had to remove everything related to .NET 4: Silverlight, Visual Studio 2010, everything. The only thing I couldn't uninstall was still the CTP. As per Long's suggestion, I then tried the repair option again, which crashed halfway, but when it was finished the "uninstall" option actually came up with an uninstall dialog this time rather than trying to install more components. The uninstall process crashed as well, and after a reboot the CTP was still in the programs list, but another attempt to uninstall it prompted the default "This thing appears to have been removed already, do you want to remove it from the list?" dialog. Fortunately, after removing it, the refresh finally installed just fine.

Lots of hoops to jump through.

No, but a suggestion is to use Hyper-V / Virtual Machine. I do that. This way, you can take snapshot(s) and revert back "cleanly". Just a tip.

EDIT : this is the reason I hate installing applications. I rarely do that these days, so sick of this mess. Snapshots helped me a LOT.

turrican said:

No, but a suggestion is to use Hyper-V / Virtual Machine. I do that. This way, you can take snapshot(s) and revert back "cleanly". Just a tip.

 

EDIT : this is the reason I hate installing applications. I rarely do that these days, so sick of this mess. Snapshots helped me a LOT.

Indeed, a virtual machine is required now. Pretty lame. I hope someone is aware of this that can fix it.

I wasn't even able to install them. It crashed when it got to installing Silverlight 4 (which I already have anyway). I ended up having to un-install any components that got installed before the crash one at a time.

Hopefully when the final release is available I can install it without any problems.

dentaku said:

I wasn't even able to install them. It crashed when it got to installing Silverlight 4 (which I already have anyway). I ended up having to un-install any components that got installed before the crash one at a time.

 

Hopefully when the final release is available I can install it without any problems.

copy-paste from someone more knowledgeable than me

Please try the steps at http://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chopra/archive/2010/05/04/uninstall-issues-with-the-mix-ctp-drop.aspx to see if they help unblock you in this scenario.

If they don’t, then you can try the tool at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2009/04/10/9544320.aspx as a last resort.

CharlieArc said:

dentaku said:

*snip*

copy-paste from someone more knowledgeable than me

 

Please try the steps at http://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chopra/archive/2010/05/04/uninstall-issues-with-the-mix-ctp-drop.aspx to see if they help unblock you in this scenario.

 

If they don’t, then you can try the tool at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2009/04/10/9544320.aspx as a last resort.

Microsoft should really review their installers. It is designed poorly. I guess their management teams are not aware of this at all. I am very interested at looking at Windows phone 7 but they just try to make everyone's life harder.

tkchen7 said:

CharlieArc said:

*snip*

Microsoft should really review their installers. It is designed poorly. I guess their management teams are not aware of this at all. I am very interested at looking at Windows phone 7 but they just try to make everyone's life harder.

Microsoft should really review their installers.

To do... what? You should NEVER install pre-release software on a mission critical machine. It's not supported, it's not guaranteed, it is supposed to kill a couple of puppies everytime it runs, etc... designing install/uninstall of pre-release software is the worst nightmare of every developer for a reason.

It is designed poorly. I guess their management teams are not aware of this at all.

Yup. I am completely sure that their "management teams" (by the way, who are they?) is completely oblivious of development issues and engineering tradeoffs. I mean, they spend most of their time sipping margaritas poolside while shooting at endangered species.

I am very interested at looking at Windows phone 7 but they just try to make everyone's life harder.

Well, that's the life of a developer. At least you have some UI to do all this.

PaoloM said:

tkchen7 said:

*snip*

Well, that's the life of a developer. At least you have some UI to do all this.

Trusting a mission critical machine to pre-release software is part of the fun. It's the same concept, but a lot safer than Russian Roulette.

I blame Google for diluting the concept of a Beta release. Won't someone please think of the puppies?

++ for the tool in CharlieArc's post. It says XNA, but it works on the WP7 CTP.

turrican said:

No, but a suggestion is to use Hyper-V / Virtual Machine. I do that. This way, you can take snapshot(s) and revert back "cleanly". Just a tip.

 

EDIT : this is the reason I hate installing applications. I rarely do that these days, so sick of this mess. Snapshots helped me a LOT.

WPF doesn't seem to play well with my virtual machines, unfortunately.

Bass said:

turrican said:

*snip*

WPF doesn't seem to play well with my virtual machines, unfortunately.

Why not use Windows?

It's pretty eycatching for WPF