Unable to uninstall, reinstall or upgrade the DLP Endpoint Agent due to missing Uninstall String values

Products

• Data Loss Prevention Endpoint Prevent
• Data Loss Prevention

Issue/Introduction

Issues encountered: 

1. Attempting to remove the Endpoint Agent using the uninstall_agent.bat or the Clean Agent tool fails. 

2. Running the upgrade_agent.bat on the same system fails to complete the upgrade because it fails to uninstall the existing version before installing the newer version. 

In both cases our log indicates there is a failure removing the currently installed agent 

 

Cause

The uninstall failed because the Uninstall Strings required to remove the DLP Endpoint Agent did not exist in the system registry.

When the initial Endpoint Agent was packaged the MSI property ARPNOREMOVE=1 had been set.

This prevents the Uninstall String values from being written under this registry keys

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{product key} 

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\{product key}\InstallProperties

Resolution

You may need to add the missing Uninstall String value to the registry to do a successful uninstall using the normal methods. 

In future ensure that you have set the property ARPNOREMOVE=0 when packaging the Endpoint Agent. 

To prevent the product from being added to Add or Remove Programs functionality simply ensure that the property ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT = 1. 

Additional Information

Microsoft Docs - ARPNOREMOVE property

Uninstall and remove the Symantec DLP Endpoint Agent