How can I uninstall an application using PowerShell

Question

Is there a simple way to hook into the standard  Add or Remove Programs  functionality using PowerShell to uninstall an existing application  Or to check if the application is installed

User · Answer

One line of code   get-package  notepad        amp     Meta Attributes  UninstallString

User · Answer

Here is the PowerShell script using msiexec   echo  Getting product code   ProductCode   Get-WmiObject win32 product -Filter  Name  Name of my Software in Add Remove Program Window     Select-Object -Expand IdentifyingNumber echo  removing Product    Out-Null argument is just for keeping the power shell command window waiting for msiexec command to finish else it moves to execute the next echo command  amp  msiexec  x  ProductCode   Out-Null echo  uninstallation finished

User · Answer

function Uninstall-App       Write-Output  Uninstalling    args 0        foreach  obj in Get-ChildItem  HKLM  SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Uninstall              dname    obj GetValue  DisplayName           if   dname -contains  args 0                  uninstString    obj GetValue  UninstallString               foreach   line in  uninstString                     found    line -match                              If   found                         appid    matches 1                      Write-Output  appid                     start-process  msiexec exe  -arg   X  appid  qb  -Wait                                                     Call it this way   Uninstall-App  Autodesk Revit DB Link 2019

User · Answer

app   Get-WmiObject -Class Win32 Product   Where-Object           Name -match  Software Name       app Uninstall     Edit  Rob found another way to do it with the Filter parameter    app   Get-WmiObject -Class Win32 Product                        -Filter  Name    Software Name

User · Answer

Use   function remove-HSsoftware   cmdletbinding    param   parameter Mandatory  true  ValuefromPipeline    true  HelpMessage  IdentifyingNumber can be retrieved with   get-wmiobject -class win32 product       ValidatePattern    a-fA-F0-9  8 - a-fA-F0-9  4 - a-fA-F0-9  4 - a-fA-F0-9  4 - a-fA-F0-9  12       string    ids   parameter Mandatory  false              ValuefromPipeline  true              ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName  true              HelpMessage  Computer name or IP adress to query via WMI     Alias  hostname CN computername     string    computers   begin    process      if  computers -eq  null        computers   Get-ADComputer -Filter     Select dnshostname       dnshostname            foreach  computer in  computers           foreach  id in  ids               write-host  Trying to uninstall sofware with ID      id    from computer      computer               app   Get-WmiObject -class Win32 Product -Computername   computer  -Filter  IdentifyingNumber     id                app   Remove-WmiObject                    end     remove-hssoftware -ids   8C299CF3-E529-414E-AKD8-68C23BA4CBE8     5A9C53A5-FF48-497D-AB86-1F6418B569B9     62092246-CFA2-4452-BEDB-62AC4BCE6C26     It s not fully tested  but it ran under PowerShell 4   I ve run the PS1 file as it is seen here  Letting it retrieve all the Systems from the AD and trying to uninstall multiple applications on all systems   I ve used the IdentifyingNumber to search for the Software cause of David Stetlers input   Not tested    Not adding ids to the call of the function in the script  instead starting the script with parameter IDs Calling the script with more then 1 computer name not automatically retrieved from the function Retrieving data from the pipe Using IP addresses to connect to the system   What it does not    It doesn t give any information if the software actually was found on any given system  It does not give any information about failure or success of the deinstallation    I wasn t able to use uninstall    Trying that I got an error telling me that calling a method for an expression that has a value of NULL is not possible  Instead I used Remove-WmiObject  which seems to accomplish the same   CAUTION  Without a computer name given it removes the software from ALL systems in the Active Directory

User · Answer

For Most of my programs the scripts in this Post did the job  But I had to face a legacy program that I couldn t remove using msiexec exe or  Win32 Product class   from some reason I got exit 0 but the program was still there   My solution was to use Win32 Process class   with the help from nickdnk this command is to get the uninstall exe file path   64bit    array  unInstallPathReg  gci  HKLM  SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Uninstall    foreach   gp    PSPath            -match  programName     select UninstallString   32bit     array  unInstallPathReg  gci  HKLM  SOFTWARE Wow6432Node Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Uninstall    foreach   gp    PSPath            -match  programName     select UninstallString   you will have to clean the the result string    uninstallPath    unInstallPathReg 0  UninstallString  uninstallPath    uninstallPath -Replace  msiexec exe     -Replace   I     -Replace   X      uninstallPath    uninstallPath  Trim     now when you have the relevant program uninstall exe file path you can use this command    uninstallResult    Get-WMIObject -List -Verbose   Where-Object     Name -eq  Win32 Process    InvokeMethod  Create    unInstallPath         uninstallResult - will have the exit code  0 is success   the above commands can also run remotely - I did it using invoke command but I believe that adding the argument -computername can work

User · Answer

EDIT  Over the years this answer has gotten quite a few upvotes  I would like to add some comments  I have not used PowerShell since  but I remember observing some issues    If there are more matches than 1 for the below script  it does not work and you must append the PowerShell filter that limits results to 1  I believe it s -First 1 but I m not sure  Feel free to edit  If the application is not installed by MSI it does not work  The reason it was written as below is because it modifies the MSI to uninstall without intervention  which is not always the default case when using the native uninstall string      Using the WMI object takes forever  This is very fast if you just know the name of the program you want to uninstall    uninstall32   gci  HKLM  SOFTWARE Wow6432Node Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Uninstall    foreach   gp    PSPath            -match  SOFTWARE NAME      select UninstallString  uninstall64   gci  HKLM  SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Uninstall    foreach   gp    PSPath            -match  SOFTWARE NAME      select UninstallString  if   uninstall64     uninstall64    uninstall64 UninstallString -Replace  msiexec exe     -Replace   I     -Replace   X      uninstall64    uninstall64 Trim   Write  Uninstalling     start-process  msiexec exe  -arg   X  uninstall64  qb  -Wait  if   uninstall32     uninstall32    uninstall32 UninstallString -Replace  msiexec exe     -Replace   I     -Replace   X      uninstall32    uninstall32 Trim   Write  Uninstalling     start-process  msiexec exe  -arg   X  uninstall32  qb  -Wait

User · Answer

I found out that Win32 Product class is not recommended because it triggers repairs and is not query optimized  Source  I found this post from Sitaram Pamarthi with a script to uninstall if you know the app guid  He also supplies another script to search for apps really fast here      Use like this    uninstall ps1 -GUID    C9E7751E-88ED-36CF-B610-71A1D262E906     cmdletbinding                 param                  parameter ValueFromPipeline  true ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName  true     string  ComputerName    env computername    parameter ValueFromPipeline  true ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName  true Mandatory  true     string  AppGUID                 try      returnval     WMICLASS     computerName ROOT CIMV2 win32 process   Create  msiexec   x AppGUID   norestart   qn      catch     write-error  Failed to trigger the uninstallation  Review the error message         exit     switch     returnval returnvalue      0    Uninstallation command triggered successfully      2    You don t have sufficient permissions to trigger the command on  Computer      3    You don t have sufficient permissions to trigger the command on  Computer      8    An unknown error has occurred      9    Path Not Found      9    Invalid Parameter

User · Answer

To fix up the second method in Jeff Hillman s post  you could either do a    app   Get-WmiObject              -Query  SELECT   FROM Win32 Product WHERE Name    Software Name     Or   app   Get-WmiObject -Class Win32 Product                        -Filter  Name    Software Name

User · Answer

I will make my own little contribution  I needed to remove a list of packages from the same computer  This is the script I came up with    packages      package1    package2    package3   foreach  package in  packages      app   Get-WmiObject -Class Win32 Product   Where-Object          Name -match   package         app Uninstall       I hope this proves to be useful   Note that I owe David Stetler the credit for this script since it is based on his

User · Answer

To fix up the second method in Jeff Hillman s post  you could either do a    app   Get-WmiObject              -Query  SELECT   FROM Win32 Product WHERE Name    Software Name     Or   app   Get-WmiObject -Class Win32 Product                        -Filter  Name    Software Name

User · Answer

To add a little to this post  I needed to be able to remove software from multiple Servers  I used Jeff s answer to lead me to this   First I got a list of servers  I used an AD query  but you can provide the array of computer names however you want    computers      computer1    computer2    computer3     Then I looped through them  adding the -computer parameter to the gwmi query   foreach  server in  computers        app   Get-WmiObject -Class Win32 Product -computer  server   Where-Object              IdentifyingNumber -match  5A5F312145AE-0252130-432C34-9D89-1             app Uninstall       I used the IdentifyingNumber property to match against instead of name  just to be sure I was uninstalling the correct application

User · Answer

Based on Jeff Hillman s answer   Here s a function you can just add to your profile ps1 or define in current PowerShell session     Uninstall a Windows program function uninstall  programName         app   Get-WmiObject -Class Win32 Product -Filter   Name         programName            if  app -ne  null                 app Uninstall             else           echo   Could not find program       programName                  Let s say you wanted to uninstall Notepad    Just type this into PowerShell    gt  uninstall  notepad      Just be aware that Get-WmiObject can take some time  so be patient

[windows] How can I uninstall an application using PowerShell?

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