I am trying to make the computer as close as possible as if Visual Studio would have never been installed on it. I used its own installer to remove all the Installed components. Then I went to Apps and features and uninstalled visual studio from there as well.
Then I read the official documentation about Removing Visual Studio where it says that I should run installCleanup.exe -f
, which I did, with the exception that on my computer I found it under:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer.98e8da4d2c7a4d1aa6e0d6e8ca2a3a02\resources\app\layout\installCleanup.exe
The above file still exists on my computer and it obviously came from the Microsoft Visual Studio Installer. It's in the name. Can I just delete it, together with the entire Microsoft Visual Studio
folder? What else should I delete to really completely uninstall Visual Studio? Are there perhaps also registries left behind that should go away? Where can I find some documentation about it?
A search on my computer revealed the following folders that may or may not be there because I ever installed Visual Studio:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Visual Studio
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio
C:\Users\myotheruser\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Visual Studio
C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Roaming\Visual Studio Setup
C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio Services
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Visual Studio 2019
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Visual Studio 2019Templates
C:\Windows\System32\Tasks_Migrated\Microsoft\VisualStudio
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VSTA\AppInfoDocument\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.AppInfoDocument
C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Adapter.v9.0
Then a bunch of others really similar to the ones above, so I would assume I can do to them the same thing.
This question is not a duplicate, as I'm not trying to fix some issue with Visual Studio by uninstalling it. My computer runs properly. I just want Visual Studio gone. No other questions specifically ask about what else can be removed after installCleanup.exe -f
already run.
InstallCleanup.exe
? It sucks if the only way to uninstall Visual Studio is to reinstall the OS, but if it gets confirmed as such, then it's a case of mumbling a swear at Microsoft, and then moving on. I suppose what you call Visual Studio components that may be required by other software were installed by that other software. Otherwise the other software wouldn't work. Making the PC as if Visual Studio was never installed would not include removing components that existed before the installation of Visual Studio.C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
is user generated. There is no other reason to not delete these folders, which are not user generated, other than that I want to be cautious before breaking things.