Uninstall InstallShield installed program
 

Hello,

I am a new developer on a project and I had elected to start from scratch and use NSIS as my intaller. However, we did an upgrade to our software that uses the NSIS installer, and the previous installed version that our customers may have was installed with InstallShield. Is there a way that my NSIS installer can uninstall any previous version found?

The problem is, I can delete the old files and replace them with the new ones, however, if they invoke the uninstaller from the control panel, the new files will be deleted (since most share the same file name). Can this be done? Thanks a bunch.

InstallShield "hides" itself in the registry. You need to find the GUID for your old InstallShield project and get the UninstallString from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\InstallShield_${GUID} [UninstallString], where !define GUID "your guid here".

Note that this will only work if your old InstallShield project had only one GUID.

assuming i find the GUIDs what next?

You may be able to execute the existing IS uninstaller and run it silently. This would remove the entire program without risking deleting certain parts of the installation (you know installshield - it creates a new GUID for practically every file)

-dandaman32