Use AppId to uninstall program installed with Inno Setup in case uninstaller exe is lost

Question

I am trying to changing our software installer (set up) project from using Wix to Inno Setup.

In Wix, it has msiexec /X {appId} as UninstallString . But I notice Inno Setup does it differently. It calls unins000.exe straight away. What I concern is that if in any cases, unins000.exe is missing from the program folder, then user might not be able to uninstall our software properly.

My questions are:

• Are there any ways I can customize the UninstallString to be using AppId to uninstall?
• Can I use the AppId to implement uninstallation with Inno Setup? (*I have static AppId for our software so AppId is always known.)

I have tried to manually type in the command msiexec /X {AppID}_isl in command prompt but seems cannot uninstall the software this way.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Inno Setup does not use MSI database at all. Inno Setup is completely standalone, without any dependencies or global databases or registrations of any kind.

Inno Setup AppId is not MSI product code. You can in a sense, uninstall the application using the AppId. By looking up the AppId in the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall and using the UninstallString therein. But that's obviously not what you want.

Using Inno Setup's own uninstaller is the only way to uninstall the application.

I do not think you are solving a real problem. Whatever user changes in the installation folder would somehow damage the application. The user is not supposed to touch the installation folder any way. And by default the user does not even have permissions to do so (if you are installing your application to Program Files ).

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Anyway, reinstalling the application (and thus recreating the uninstaller) will for many cases solve the problem of a missing uninstaller.