Msi uninstall takes forever

This involves quite a bit of overhead , but is necessary to achieve important corporate deployment and system administration benefits.

No other deployment technologies feature this level of control. Large MSI files with embedded source files may need a lot of time to extract its installer files to the temp folder. This can sometimes be the biggest bottleneck of all. It is recommended to run an admin install to extract the source files from such a package so that they appear side-by-side with the MSI file itself, eliminating the need to extract files locally on each machine and hence saving deployment time.

Here is another article describing file extraction from MSI packages in simple terms. I have never tried this, but it is well-worth a read. I doubt you will succeed using it effectively, but it might be worth a try. See the link above for valid values. I would suggest 3 for no restore point , and only FileCosting the process of determining disk space requirements.

Or 7 to also reduce the frequency of progress messages. Normal " costing " features a whole lot of feature, component, disk, and registry comparisons and calculations between what exists on the system and what is being installed.

Most of this is rarely necessary in my opinion disk space is generally plentiful on client PCs - and back in the reality of with smaller SD-disk the space issue might have resurfaced I would strongly advise against using this unless you are staging a fresh PC. This is a special case when you can just start over if something fails. For a computer in real use I would not recommend enabling this property.

The irony is that disabling rollback will speed up things the most if you are running a huge update package that replaces lots of files, or any large uninstall since an uninstall will move all removed files to a rollback area. It could be quite significant, but unsafe. You just set this property at the command line: msiexec. And finally, as mentioned above in background information, run an administrative installation of the MSI file to extract files so that extraction doesn't happen locally on each machine.

This assumes that you are on a rather fast network, and that file copy happens without too much delay. I suppose a high-latency wireless network could make things slower with small files extracted that have to be copied one by one.

Then you need to follow the prompts and select an extraction location for the files. See superuser. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How can I speed up MSI package install and uninstall? Ask Question. Any behavior that appears to violate End user license agreements, including providing product keys or links to pirated software. Unsolicited bulk mail or bulk advertising. Any link to or advocacy of virus, spyware, malware, or phishing sites. Any other inappropriate content or behavior as defined by the Terms of Use or Code of Conduct.

Any image, link, or discussion related to child pornography, child nudity, or other child abuse or exploitation. Details required : characters remaining Cancel Submit. Was this reply helpful? Yes No. Sorry this didn't help. Thanks for your feedback. I have the same question 0. Improve this question. Chris S Chris S 2 2 gold badges 8 8 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges. I just want to note, this is only true if you 1 disable the system restore checkpoint feature, and 2 it's a gigantic installer which is not unique to Windows Installer -- I've seen lots of slow Inno installers, simply because they're huge.

I've had Windows installers install and remove themselves in literally a handful of seconds. For example, Bootvis installs in 3 seconds on my system. It uninstalls in the same amount of time. And no, my system isn't blazing fast either. The difference is that Windows Installer has a lot more features, so larger programs use it more often. Mehrdad did you mean 1 enable system restore? Indeed yes, typo. I came here because MSI uninstall was taking forever See this answer for technical details for speeding up MSI installations: superuser.

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Also from the article entitled, appropriately, "Windows Installer sucks" , an excerpt: It used to be that installation would consist of a program executing and taking a few simple steps to install your software, then do the reverse on uninstallation. Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. I take more time than that flipping through TV channels : The Registry This is the culprit number one.

It is the Windows registry that should have had its overhaul a long time ago : For more advanced information: For a deep analysis of what MSI is doing during each install or uninstall procedure, refer to this article that explains how to setup MSI Debug. A Dwarf A Dwarf Also, as far as I know, MSI uses transactions for everything it does so it can always do a proper rollback whenever an operation fails.

This probably also doesn't contribute to speed but is quite essential for data integrity. Right now, I'm installing OpenOffice and it has already been almost an hour ; — Quiark. Very informative. I for one seem to get "Cannot create restore point" errors often maybe restore point quote reached? For compiled MSI files some time is also needed to extract the install files. Breakthrough Breakthrough The question was about why does MSI take so long to do something, compared to pure. From the question Sign up or log in Sign up using Google.

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