How to perform an unattended uninstall of Visual Studio 2005

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I have previously posted several items about how to manage deployment of Visual Studio 2005, but a question was sent to me today that I haven't addressed yet - how to perform an unattended uninstall of Visual Studio 2005.

It is possible to perform an unattended uninstall of Visual Studio 2005 by creating an INI file and running setup with the INI file as a parameter using the following steps:

  1. Install the same edition and language of Visual Studio 2005 on the same OS that you want to perform an unattended uninstall on
  2. Launch Visual Studio 2005 in unattended INI creation mode by running <Visual Studio source location>\setup\setup.exe /createunattend <path to INI file to create>
  3. Click the Uninstall Visual Studio link to create an unattended uninstall INI file
  4. Launch Visual Studio 2005 setup in unattended uninstall mode by running <Visual Studio source location>\setup\setup.exe /unattendfile <path to INI file created step 2 above>

There are a couple caveats to keep in mind when trying to perform an unattended uninstall of Visual Studio 2005:

  • You have to create the unattended INI file on a machine that has the exact version and language of Visual Studio installed that you want to remove
  • The unattended uninstall will only remove the main Visual Studio product; it will not remove any prerequisites or optional components (the .NET Framework, Document Explorer 2005, SQL Express, etc); you will need to run these setup packages with the relevant silent switches to perform silent uninstalls if necessary