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I know that it is possible to uninstall a patch and there by bringing the application to a previous state that existed before installaion of this patch.

Is this possible to uninstall a 'Minor Upgrade"?

I installed a minor upgrade over an existing application, but in the add/remove programs, i am seeing just one entry for the application.

Clearly installation is successful and I can see the version number and new files are updated by the minor upgrade. I can see version number change in Add/Remove programs. But I see only one entry.

Now how to just uninstall the Minor Upgrade?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Oct 6 '09 at 19:50

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2 Answers

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Sorry, Windows Installer doesn't support this. Minor upgrades can be delivered as a patch, and in that case you can uninstall them. In the non-patch case (a full MSI installed with REINSTALL list and REINSTALLMODE including v), there is only rollback during its initial upgrade install.

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Thanks Michael for your clarification. Can you please explain "there is only rollback during its initial upgrade install"? Thanks in advance for your explanation :). – MSV Muthu Oct 6 '09 at 1:09
I was referring to the general rollback support in case of a failure during the installation process. That still works, but once the package is finalized, there's no uninstall of the non-patch case short of uninstalling the full product. – Michael Urman Oct 6 '09 at 13:19
I need one more clarification Michael. Since Minor Upgrade and Major Upgrade does not have rollback option what is the real use of Minor Upgrade? I understand that Major upgrade will uninstall and install the entire application freshly. Since Minor upgrade will not be able to rollback, why dont we choose Major upgrade always? Please throw some light on this. – MSV Muthu Oct 7 '09 at 5:04
Your picture isn't quite correct. Think of it as a database transaction. A minor or major upgrade will update the system, then commit the transaction. If there are any failures during the update, the changes are rolled back to the previous baseline. However once committed, it replaces the baseline. When a patch is installed, the changes are the same, but the system retains enough information to revert to the previous baseline (the old baseline and a delta). Minor and major upgrades differ by updating, or uninstalling and reinstalling, respectively. Major upgrades cannot easily become patches. – Michael Urman Oct 7 '09 at 14:27
i understand about the minor and major upgrade are not reversible.But my question is different.Lets say we are going to deliver an upgrade. We have no problem in revising and incrementing the Major version number.we have quite a few changes and we cannot consider it as patch. Now in this case, why don't we choose major upgrade over minor upgrade?If uninstalling and reinstalling is acceptable, then we can choose major upgrade always right? – MSV Muthu Oct 7 '09 at 16:08
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it is not possible, any update for a software relplaces old files with new ones, so therefore no rollback it is possible

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Patch replaces old files with new files but still it is possible to rollback! – MSV Muthu Oct 7 '09 at 2:55
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