Client for Open Enterprise Server uninstall does not work

  • 7017745
  • 20-Jun-2016
  • 20-Jun-2016

Environment

Novell Client 2 for Windows
Client for Open Enterprise Server 2
Microsoft Windows 10

Situation

When attempting to uninstall the Client following TID 7009974, the uninstall does not run, and the user is prompted to restart. After restarting the system, the Client is still installed.

Resolution

Workaround: First, reinstall the Client for Open Enterprise Server, then uninstall it. 

When reinstalling the Client, Windows goes through the process of re-adding the entry to the network adapter properties that shouldn't have been missing in the first place.  Once that entry exists again in Windows, normal uninstallation of the Novell Client will be possible.

Cause

Windows 10 upgrades (including Windows 10 to Windows 10 upgrades. e.g. upgrading from the Windows 10 July 2015 release to the Windows 10 November 2015 release) have been observed to remove the installed Novell Client entry from the Windows network adapter properties.  The entry is missing even though the Windows upgrade did not programmatically trigger a formal "remove Novell Client from the network configuration" during the upgrade (since that would have completely uninstalled the application), and the installed Novell Client still works in all other aspects post-upgrade.

The reason for this behavior is unknown, but the result is that when we trigger uninstallation by programmatically invoking Windows to "remove Novell Client from the network configuration", nothing happens because Windows doesn't think Novell Client is part of the network configuration and Windows simply reports "all done."