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I've been looking to find a CLEAN solution to completely and ultimately remove Visual Studio 2010 from my computer. When you install Visual Studio, it also installs a bunch of programs (about 55) in the add/remove programs panel (appwiz.cpl).

I've already tried a small utility made by Microsoft but it does almost nothing.

I'm really looking now for a better way to uninstall any version of Microsoft Visual Studio. Because I have a lot of computers, I'm often switching to a version or another or I just decide that I don't need it anymore on one computer to get back some space.

Really, what's the best solution? If there isn't one, why haven't Microsoft developed one that is actually working well?

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  • Run the uninstaller from Add/Remove Programs?
    – jrummell
    Commented Sep 25, 2012 at 14:18
  • 11
    Uninstall the "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010" actually seems to uninstall the product but the 54 other entries created in the Add/Remove Programs stay there. It is possible to uninstall each one of those 55 entries, but it's kinda long and I'm not sure it's what we can call a "clean" uninstall.
    – dan
    Commented Sep 25, 2012 at 14:25
  • 2
    maybe not an option but, installing it in a virtual environment will make it easy to uninstall (just remove the virtual).
    – default
    Commented Sep 26, 2012 at 12:59
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    Put in your CD or mount your ISO. Run the setup program from the command prompt using the flags /uninstall /force
    – kobaltz
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 23:38
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    @kobaltz I would like to see any documentation on this about what it actually really does.
    – dan
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 1:03

10 Answers 10

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Update April 2016 - for VS2013+

Microsoft started to address the issue in late 2015 by releasing VisualStudioUninstaller.

They abandoned the solution for a while; however work has begun again again as of April 2016.

There has finally been an official release for this uninstaller in April 2016 which is described as being "designed to cleanup/scorch all Preview/RC/RTM releases of Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio vNext".

Original Answer - for VS2010, VS2012

Note that the following two solutions still leave traces (such as registry files) and can't really be considered a 'clean' uninstall (see the final section of the answer for a completely clean solution).

Solution 1 - for: VS 2010

There's an uninstaller provided by Microsoft called the Visual Studio 2010 Uninstall Utility. It comes with three options:

  1. Default (VS2010_Uninstall-RTM.ENU.exe)
  2. Full (VS2010_Uninstall-RTM.ENU.exe /full)
  3. Complete (VS2010_Uninstall-RTM.ENU.exe /full /netfx)

The above link explains the uninstaller in greater detail - I recommend reading the comments on the article before using it as some have noted problems (and workarounds) when service packs are installed. Afterwards, use something like CCleaner to remove the leftover registry files.

Here is the link to the download page of the VS2010 UU.

Solution 2 - for: VS 2010, VS 2012

Microsoft provide an uninstall /force feature that removes most remnants of either VS2010 or VS2012 from your computer.

MSDN: How to uninstall Visual Studio 2010/2012. From the link:

Warning: Running this command may remove some packages even if they are still in use like those listed in Optional shared packages.

  1. Download the setup application you used to originally install Visual Studio 2012. If you installed from media, please insert that media.
  2. Open a command prompt. Click Run on the Start menu (Start + R). Type cmd and press OK (Enter).
  3. Type in the full path to the setup application and pass the following command line switches: /uninstall /force Example: D:\vs_ultimate.exe /uninstall /force
  4. Click the Uninstall button and follow the prompts.

Afterwards, use something like CCleaner to remove the leftover registry files.

A completely clean uninstall?

Sadly, the only (current) way to achieve this is to follow dnLL's advice in their answer and perform a complete operating system reinstall. Then, in future, you could use Visual Studio inside a Virtual Machine instead and not have to worry about these issues again.

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  • Which means I have to uninstall the 55 entries (Visual Studio, SQL Server and 53 other random components) one by one? Not sure it's really clean to run 55 different uninstallers, is it?
    – dan
    Commented Sep 25, 2012 at 14:26
  • Well, have you tried archive.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2010uninstall already too?
    – dsgriffin
    Commented Sep 25, 2012 at 14:29
  • this is the utility I was talking about in my OP, doesn't do much actually (and as we can see, if you scroll down that page, I'm not the only one with THE problem).
    – dan
    Commented Sep 25, 2012 at 14:31
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    Clean != quick. From Windows' point of view, those are all separate applications, and need to be uninstalled separately. Any utility that magically uninstalls them without actually running the corresponding uninstallers would definitely not be a clean solution; the best you could hope for is a utility that runs the uninstallers for you, one by one, in the right order; but all that's going to do is save you time, and really, how often do you need to uninstall Visual Studio?
    – Harry Johnston
    Commented Sep 26, 2012 at 1:53
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    By experience, uninstalling a single Microsoft entry from add/remove programs will leave a lot of garbage in both the registry and my hard drive. I still have done it (55 entries one by one) and I still see "Visual Studio" everywhere when doing some CTRL+F in either the registry or the hard drive. I've not been trying for all the other components but I guess there is still a lot of work to do there too. Well, final answer is no, there is no way to completely uninstall in any clean way Visual Studio. There still might be one: as far as it goes, formatting does a pretty good job.
    – dan
    Commented Sep 26, 2012 at 12:54
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This is the simplest way to remove all the packages. From an admin prompt:
wmic product where "name like 'microsoft visual%'" call uninstall /nointeractive

Repeat for SQL etc by replacing visual% in above command with sql.

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  • 2
    can u elaborate more ? can u add an example?
    – iosMentalist
    Commented Feb 27, 2015 at 7:30
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    thanks! you can also do "name like 'microsoft visual%' OR name like 'microsoft sql%'" to get it all in one
    – agradl
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 0:47
  • @user3658994 This worked fine for most of the components. Although i get ReturnValue = 1603 for "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - ENU", Version="10.0.40219" and "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - ENU",Version="10.0.40219". Any ideas on how to get rid of those two ?
    – thanos.a
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 0:02
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Put in your CD or mount your ISO. Run the setup program from the command prompt using the flags /uninstall /force

I actually had ran into this issue the other day and it worked wonders. =)

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  • 4
    Run it 3+ times to get rid of more stuff. Still does not remove everything cleanly...
    – Etan
    Commented Nov 14, 2013 at 11:53
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    the link in @dsg's answer showing the reply from the Visual Studio team already suggests this solution, however it doesn't work fully hence the petition for a removal software :(
    – user2381114
    Commented Oct 18, 2014 at 19:43
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    This doesn't work for VS2010 pro. when i run setup /force /uninstall it just gives me the install splash screen.
    – JDPeckham
    Commented May 17, 2015 at 14:02
  • Tried that a couple different times. Even that fails for me, i.e., it actually crashes part-way through.
    – Ken Smith
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 1:30
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The only real clean way to uninstall VS (Visual Studio, whatever version it is) is to completely reinstall the whole OS. If you don't, more compatibility problems might surface.

Permanent solution

Starting from scratch (clean install, VS never installed on the OS), the best way to avoid all those problems is to install and run VS from a VM (virtual machine) as stated by Default in the comments above. This way, and as long as Microsoft doesn't do anything to improve its whole platform to be more user-friendly, switching from a version to another will be quick and easy and the main partition of the HDD (or SSD in my case) won't be filed with all the garbage that VS leaves behind.

Of course, the disadvantage is speed. The program will be slower in pretty much every way. But honestly, who uses VS for its speed? Even on the latest enthusiast-platforms, it takes ages to install. Even if VS might start up faster on a high-end SSD, it's just slow.

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  • 5
    To be quite frank, this answer (formatting & reinstalling the OS fresh) is the only correct answer. I have been in this same situation. Microsoft products (especially VS) tend to spread out and infest every nook and cranny of your OS. Furthermore the uninstallers inexorably fail to completely remove all components and you will be left with hundreds of files, entries, and other junk still floating around. You can't simply delete the junk either because if you try, you'll most likely end up with a non-functional .NET framework or worse.
    – Lakey
    Commented Jan 14, 2013 at 5:49
  • Few months later, I tried VMware, Virtual PC and VirtualBox and I suggest using this last one as it's completely free and performances are on par with VMware (while Virtual PC is way behind). VS2010 works quite great in this environment and I'm using this VM for a lot of development softwares that I'm using once in a while.
    – dan
    Commented Apr 26, 2013 at 17:40
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    @dnLL: "Even on the latest enthusiast-platforms, it takes ages to install" - I just installed VS 2013 on a Win 8.1 with an SSD (Intel 520 on SATA3, no RAID or anything). Installation took 6 minutes. "Even if VS might start up faster on a high-end SSD, it's just slow" - startup time is 2 seconds, on cold after a reboot.
    – Boris B.
    Commented Jan 2, 2014 at 19:49
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    @BorisB. I hope you don't call 6 minutes quick when you have a high-speed SSD. But VS2013 wasn't even released when I made this post.
    – dan
    Commented Jan 7, 2014 at 4:39
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Struggled with the same problem: Many applications, BUT make at least this part "pleasant": The trick is called Batch-Uninstall. So use one of these three programs i can recommend:

  • Absolute Uninstaller (+ slim,removes registry and folders, - click OK 50 times)
  • IObit Uninstaller (+ also for toolbars, removes registry and folders, - ships itself with optional toolbar)
  • dUninstaller (+ silent mode/force: no clicking for 50 applications, it does it in the background - doesn't scan registry/files)

Take no.2 in imho, 1 is nice but sometimes encounters some bugs :-)

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  • IOBit indeed does a thorough job, just be careful not to accept the toolbar on install
    – smirkingman
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 20:15
1

There is a solution here : Add

/full /netfx at the end of the path!

This should clear almost all. You should only be left with SQL Server.

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  • I would really like to have some more feedbacks on this, has anyone tried it? This has been posted in January 2014 and it talks about 55 leftover applications in the cpanel, it's almost like the author has read my post here on SO. Are you the author of that article? It does look promising and I would like to see if someone is willing to try it in a VM with VS2008, VS2010, VS2012 and VS2013.
    – dan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 13:06
  • kobaltz's answer looks similar with the use of /uninstall /force and it's been said to not be working really nicely, that's why I'm really suspicious about miraculous and easy solution like that but I guess we will have to try it.
    – dan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 13:09
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Download and install IOBIT uninstaller: http://www.iobit.com/advanceduninstaller.php, find the date in which you install Visual Studio and select all programas from that date r elated to VS. Then run de batch uninstaller. It is not a fully automated solution but it is a lot quicker than going one by one int he add / remove programs in Windows. It even has a power scan to clean the registry.

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If I may give an answer to an old thread; You can use PC Decrapifier to select programs you want to uninstall. PC Decrapifier will uninstall them one by one for you so you don't have to click them all seperately.

This is very useful for removing all the 'junk' - like the SQL Database tools - Visual Studio leaves behind even when uninstalled.

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  • Sounds like a good way to save some time if going the long route, but it won't clean the mess in Windows registry and all the other hanging DLLs on the HDD.
    – dan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 13:07
-3

Best way I have used is to mount the VS 2010 Image or insert the Installation disc and run the uninstall option, really works well

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  • 4
    Does it uninstall all the 55 entries in the appwiz.cpl one by one? Last time I checked, it didn't.
    – dan
    Commented Aug 11, 2014 at 13:33
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the best way to uninstall VS 2010 is to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Uninstall Utility on this link http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=vs2010uninstall&DownloadId=11182

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    This has already been discussed in the comments that you should have read before posting this. This utility doesn't uninstall any of the 55+ programs installed with VS2010.
    – dan
    Commented Apr 8, 2013 at 12:39

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