Agent Third-Party Deployment: Uninstalling from Windows Platforms

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

If you decide to remove the FlexNet Inventory Agent from a system running Microsoft Windows, you have two basic approaches:

• Use the deployment tool with which you completed the original installation to now remove it.
• Manually navigate to Add/Remove Programs (or equivalent) in Microsoft Windows and uninstall FlexNet Inventory Agent.
  Tip: This standard Windows facility means that, depending on privileges in your environment, users of managed devices can remove FlexNet Inventory Agent. If you wish to prevent users on these target devices from using Windows Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the FlexNet inventory agent, uncomment this line in mgssetup.ini before deployment:

     [Custom Install Settings]
  ALLOWUNINSTALL = 0

  Of course, this reduces your options for uninstallation, and you must then use your deployment tool to do any planned removal.

Uninstalling the agent by means of manual uninstall, third party deployment uninstall, or auto-upgrade, will remove the executable files but leave the following behind:

• Registry data added by policy or the agent itself
  Note: Equivalent keys in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive are now deprecated (meaning that their use is discouraged, that their ongoing functionality is not guaranteed, and that at an unspecified future time support for this hive may be entirely removed).
  • On Windows servers, inventory beacons, and managed devices, agent registry entries on 32-bit operating systems, the default location is under this key:
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ManageSoft Corp\
  • For 64-bit operating systems, the default key is:
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ManageSoft Corp\
• Agent output files (C:\ProgramData\ManageSoft Corp)
• Agent logs (C:\Windows\temp\ManageSoft, %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp\ManageSoft)
• Policy data (C:\Program Files (x86)\ManageSoft\Launcher)
• Folders %ProgramFiles%\ManageSoft\Launcher\Cache, and its peer PkgCache, since these may contain content that a future re-install of the FlexNet Inventory Agent can use. (On 64-bit platforms, substitute %ProgramFiles(x86)%.)

Note: Anything created by the agent at runtime will typically not be removed when uninstalling the agent because the data is unknown to Windows Installer.