MT4 won't uninstall from Win 2012

New comment
 

Hello, I have a VPS with Windows 2012 Datacenter Edition R2 as the OS and when I try to uninstall MT4 (from any broker it seems, I tried 8 different ones, all with the same result) from Control Panel -> Programs -> Programs and Features -> Uninstall/Change, an error message appears: "You do not have sufficient access to uninstall MT4. Please contact your system administrator." I am logged in as Administrator (the standard login for a VPS).

When I try to run the "Uninstall.exe" from within the MT4 folder, another error message comes up: "A referral was returned from the server." The same message appears even when I try to run the uninstall.exe as administrator.

Has anyone an idea how can this be fixed?

Thanks in advance.

 
Fikorator:

Hello, I have a VPS with Windows 2012 Datacenter Edition R2 as the OS and when I try to uninstall MT4 (from any broker it seems, I tried 8 different ones, all with the same result) from Control Panel -> Programs -> Programs and Features -> Uninstall/Change, an error message appears: "You do not have sufficient access to uninstall MT4. Please contact your system administrator." I am logged in as Administrator (the standard login for a VPS).

When I try to run the "Uninstall.exe" from within the MT4 folder, another error message comes up: "A referral was returned from the server." The same message appears even when I try to run the uninstall.exe as administrator.

Has anyone an idea how can this be fixed?

What User rights do you have ? are you an actual Administrator or just using a User called Administrator ? have you checked what user rights your User has ?
 
RaptorUK:
What User rights do you have ? are you an actual Administrator or just using a User called Administrator ? have you checked what user rights your User has ?

I am not sure (will find out), anyway, the situation is exactly the same even if I install MT4 into an UAC non-protected location (e.g. desktop instead of Program Files (x86)).
 
Fikorator:

I am not sure (will find out), anyway, the situation is exactly the same even if I install MT4 into an UAC non-protected location (e.g. desktop instead of Program Files (x86)).
It may well be nothing to do with UAC, it's probably about User rights . . . the Desktop is part of the Users profile, even the Admistrator does not automatically have access to a User's profile. You should install in a folder that you can control the User rights for . . . if you are going to use a Server OS you should learn how to use it.


What did the VPS company tech support have to say ?
 

The VPS company support are looking into this, I was told that I am the actual administrator when I log in. They also told me that they had other users pointing out this issue but they have not found a solution yet. As I said, even when I installed MT4 onto desktop (which is under that user's profile regardless if that user is the actual admin or not) and it still did not let me uninstall it. Strange.

Thanks for your help anyway.

 

You probably should report this issue to the service desk.

 
Fikorator:

The VPS company support are looking into this, I was told that I am the actual administrator when I log in.

Your username has nothing to do with the rights that the user has, just because you login with a User called Administrator . . . which is a bad idea, does not mean that administrator is actually an Administrator. Check the groups that the Administrator User belongs to then you will know what rights it has.

You might find some help here: https://www.mql5.com/en/forum/123970/page2#808209
 
RaptorUK:
Your username has nothing to do with the rights that the user has, just because you login with a User called Administrator . . . which is a bad idea, does not mean that administrator is actually an Administrator. Check the groups that the Administrator User belongs to then you will know what rights it has.

You might find some help here: https://www.mql5.com/en/forum/123970/page2#808209


The VPS provider has confirmed that I log in as an actual administrator (not just a user account named administrator), however, to be able to uninstall MT4 it's not enough to run the uninstall.exe as administrator, but it needs to be set up in the unistall.exe properties/compatibility: "Run this program as an administrator" which a bit stupid requirement, but at least this works. Strangely enough this needs to be done only with MT4, all other software uninstalls without this.


Thank for your help anyway.

 
Fikorator:

[...] Has anyone an idea how can this be fixed?

Try running a command prompt as administrator, and then running the uninstall from there (e.g. c:\mt4\mybroker\uninstall.exe)

The underlying cause seems to be that the manifest in uninstall.exe is broken. An assemblyIdentity is a compulsory section of a manifest (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374219(v=vs.85).aspx), but the manifest in uninstall.exe doesn't have one, and this seems to prevent it from properly honouring requests to run as administrator.

 
gchrmt4:

Try running a command prompt as administrator [...]


... I take that back. The issue is the manifest, but it's not the assemblyIdentity section, and running from an administrative command prompt doesn't reliably help.

The uninstall seems to have changed recently to something which is not problematic (and the issue is therefore broker-dependent, stemming from how recently they last generated their MT4 installer).

The older problematic manifests have <requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="true"/>. The newer ones have <requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false "/>

Someone at MetaQuotes seems to have misunderstood the meaning of uiAccess. It does not mean "allow the application to interact with the desktop", and the documentation says that it should only be turned on for digitally-signed applications, which uninstall.exe is not.

New comment
Reason: