How to remove packages from workstations once installed.

Question

How do I remove an application deployed via a Ranger RollOut package?

Symptoms

N/A

Resolution

Instructions

To remove an application created and deployed via Ranger Rollout, log on to the machine as an administrator or master user and manually remove the application via the standard Control Panel Add/Remove Programs dialog.

Ranger Rollout works by creating packages based on the changes made to a machine when an application is installed. Removal should therefore follow exactly the same process as if the application was installed manually.

Note:

One advanced feature of Ranger RollOut is that any changes an application makes to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry when installed are copied down to the local machine when the application's package is deployed - in a sub-directory inside the C:\PackCtrl directory.

Then, each time a user logs onto that machine, his/her HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry is updated with those changes. This only happens once for each package for each user since a key is added to their HKEY_CURRENT_USER to say "got the update already". This potentially allows users to change and store settings subsequently.

However... If a package is removed via add/remove programs etc, this does not delete the associated PackCtrl sub-directory, thus users will still get the registry changes when they log in.

Normally this wouldn't matter, as the application is no longer installed, so the registry settings are generally not used.

One of the sites that had used RollOut to deploy a printer driver for Windows 2000 workstations had the problem whereby although the administrator logged on and removed the printer locally, users still saw it when they logged on. This was because in Windows 2000 the printer definition is user-based, and the package's HKEY_CURRENT_USERsettings were still being merged.


There are two possible solutions....

Delete the appropriate PackCtrl sub-directory on each machine after removing the application.

Or

Log in as the RangerSetup user and select the "Remove Ranger Package Files" option.
This will delete all package information from the machine, and is mainly intended to allow
complete removal of all Ranger related files when Ranger is removed permanently. (it is not
removed by default to allow a quick RangerRemove/Install to update/fix a Ranger installation.