Why is my Uninstall method not called from the msi?

Question

Hi,

I am writing an installer for my web app and I struggle with the uninstaller part. Despite the fact that I created a custom action on Uninstall in my Application Setup Project, the InstallerClass is set to true, the method:

public override void Uninstall(IDictionary savedState)
    {
        //MessageBox.Show("Attach debugger!", "Viper.Setup");
        Cleanup();
        base.Uninstall(savedState);
    }

on the installer class doesn't seem to be called. Any ideas what could be the reason?

EDIT: I also noticed that it not only doesn't run the Installer, but also doesn't delete my main dll file. To make it worse, when I install a new version after uninstalling the previous one, this dll is still the old one (even though installation and uninstallation were successful)

Answer 1

Did you include the output of your installer code in the Code Actions tab of the installer?

If that's not it...

I ran into a similar problem in the past and found I needed all 4 methods defined or the uninstall would not run. Add your code to the template below:

[RunInstaller(true)]
public class MyInstaller: Installer
{
    public override void Install(IDictionary stateSaver)
    {
        base.Install(stateSaver);
    }

    public override void Commit(IDictionary savedState)
    {
        base.Commit(savedState);
    }

    public override void Rollback(IDictionary savedState)
    {
        base.Rollback(savedState);
    }

    public override void Uninstall(IDictionary savedState)
    {
        base.Uninstall(savedState);
    }
}

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

I stopped using these rubbish msi's and created a zip + cmd script instead. Strongly recommended, took me 10 times less to set up and actually works.