Home / Silent uninstall does not work

With the latest release 3.2, the uninstall.exe is no longer available within the installation path.
Instead, the uninstallation is now kicked off by starting SumatraPDF.exe -uninstall. This brings up a prompt which cannot be suppressed.

Could you please change the built-in -uninstall routine to accept the -silent parameter (which is now available for some printing options only)?

As a workaround, it is possible to copy the old uninstall.exe from version 3.1.2 to the installation path and start it from there with the /S parameter.

That might work, but may not handle new locations of settings file, debug symbols (if downloaded) etc. Best to have the program itself updated so that it fully respects the silent switch when it runs both its install and uninstall routines.

The work-around won’t work.

The prompt is Windows elevation prompt. The uninstaller must run as an elevated process in order to remove registry entries.

If the Windows elevation prompt is indeed what is being talked about here, then I fail to understand why @magl8 says that the 3.1.2 uninstaller didn’t display the same?

I came to the same conclusion, mqgl8 is right.

There seems to be no working silent uninstall option.
When running ‘SumatraPDF.exe -uninstall’ the SumatraPDF Uninstall GUI is prompted, adding the silent switch (-s) like in ‘SumatraPDF.exe -uninstall -s’ has no effect.

The uninstaller the Windows Control Panel launches seems to be temporarily placed at “C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Temp\Sumatra-Uninstaller.exe”.

In addition:
I found the Uninstall GUI to be slow / not responding / unstable on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 and Win 10 Pro x64.
With a little bit of patience, the uninstaller comes back and finally works.

It is the yellow SumatraPDF Uninstall GUI, not a UAC prompt.

Can you please re-test with a recent pre-release since the silent function was modified after the initial 3.2 was announced

Hi GitHubRulesOK,

I tested with the latest pre-release (SumatraPDF-prerel-12434-64-install.exe), resulting in the same behavior. The Uninstall GUI still prompts when using SumatraPDF.exe -uninstall (-s)

Thanks

@kjk is there any reason this is not as users expect ?

The latest SumatraPDF.exe (delivered with SumatraPDF-prerel-12434-64-install.exe) creates a new uninstaller executable “%TEMP%\Sumatra-Uninstaller.exe” and executes it when you use the -uninstall parameter. The spawned %TEMP%\Sumatra-Uninstaller.exe would accept both -uninstall -silent parameters and do a silent uninstall. The problem now is that the main program SumatraPDF.exe does not pass on the -silent parameter to the Sumatra-Uninstaller process.

As a workaround, you can copy the Sumatra-Uninstaller.exe to %TEMP% and call it with %TEMP%\Sumatra-Uninstaller.exe -uninstall -silent

Just to confirm for versions after 3.2.0 (Pre-release 3.3.12446 onwards)

The correct sequence to install e.g. to Program Files is to keep -install in the filename and runas admin
The usual caveats apply e.g. do NOT overwrite without uninstalling previous version and first back-up any user customization / preferences inc. SumatraPDF-settings.txt

For 64 bit (you will need to adjust for 32bit)

>SumatraPDF-64-install.exe  -s
OR
>SumatraPDF-64-install.exe -d "C:\Program Files\SumatraPDF" -s

Place an all user shortcut in C:\Users\Public\Desktop

To Uninstall by ELEVATED admin command line

>"%localappdata%\SumatraPDF\Sumatrapdf.exe" -uninstall -s
OR
>"C:\Program Files\SumatraPDF\Sumatrapdf.exe" -uninstall -s

Remove any shortcut in C:\Users\Public\Desktop
Same caveat back-up any user customization and preferences inc. SumatraPDF-settings.txt

Ok, that seems to be going in the right direction.

I found that you can change the default installer filename as long as you add ‘-s -install’ to the command line arguments.

An All User Desktop Shortcut when installing to %localappdata% is problem, it won’t work for other users.

Was there any specific reason to change the default installation path from “C:\Program Files\SumatraPDF” to “%LOCALAPPDATA%\SumatraPDF” ?

I’m only a moderator so can only advise that for more than one user my recommendation for install is to use Program Files (silent or otherwise)
In such a case a shared public shortcut should work for multiple users?

And only my humble observation that if it’s a one user application then having all eggs in one basket makes troubleshooting much simpler.

The latest daily build of 2020-04-04 (SumatraPDF-prerel-12450-64-install.exe) passes on both the -uninstall -silent options to the uninstaller. Woohoo! Well done, kjk!