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Not applicable

Cannot uninstall FC on Vista

I started looking into issues that might appear as new computers soon will come with Vista. While trying out various of the software our company uses, I kind of mindlessly installed FortiClient CE 3.0.311. For obvious reasons i doesn' t work, but more importantly I cannot uninstall it. When I try to uninstall it via Add/Remove programs (well actually it' s not called that any more, but I haven' t seen Vista in english yet, so I don' t know the new name (except for the swedish version)) I get the following message; " FortiClient cannot be uninstalled right now because it has been locked down by the network administrator. To unlock tou must first unlock FortiClient via the ' Unlock' button on the General tab" . There is no Unlock button on the genral tab... Neither can I upgrade, as the installer for the latest version can' t write to certain registry keys (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Fortinet\FOrtiClient\FA_Scheduler\* etc). Neither am I allowed to even look at them. Whats the next step for this?
16 REPLIES 16
rwpatterson
Valued Contributor III

Look back through this forum. I believe Vanc posted a way to do this, as there was some incompatability between the two. If not him, it was someone else. It should be in the last year.

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!
See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com
vanc
New Contributor II

Please click the " Uninstall" button on top of the Program List window. If you use " Change" and then " Remove" , it won' t work. The gotcha is documented in the release notes.
Not applicable

I' ve seen notes about the Uninstall button, but for FortiClient there is no uninstall button. I just have " Sort" , View" , " Change" and " Repair" . (As I said before, I still haven' t seen Vista in english, so my translation of " Sort" may be wrong). Uninstall is there for other programs but not for FC. Well, I did the whole take ownership procedure and got Full Control permissions for everything in the SOFTWARE\FortiClient key and recursively. Tried to uninstall, but still the " Unlock in General tab" message. I upgraded to version 3.0.465 (which btw is to no use for me as VPN is the feature I need). Upgrade went fine but I still can' t uninstall. Still no uninstall button and when trying to uninstall via " Change" it seems to go fine for a while. After " stopping services" it says " Status" for a while, the something flashes by for about 3/100:ths of a second before the rollback starts. Another thing; Is there a central place to download updates etc? I always seems to fumble around looking for it and end up signing up for another evaluation copy, that I don' t even know the version of until I have installed it...
vanc
New Contributor II

I see what' s wrong. 3.0.311 is not compatible with Vista at all. The earliest version is 3.0.400 (Consumer Edition) or 3.0.395 (Enterprise Edition). The only way is to log on as administrator, launch regedit and change the registry properties (take owership). Until you can remove the whole Fortinet registry key. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Fortinet
Not applicable

Hi vanc. I said that " I kind of mindlessly installed FortiClient CE 3.0.311" . I just didn' t think about it. You know, kind of a sloppy moment, while testing various company SW on Vista. After taking ownership of the keys I upgraded to 3.0.465 CE (as I still couldn' t uninstall). Still no uninstall button, and trying to remove via the change button fails as my last post says. I have deleted HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Fortinet. I still can' t uninstall.
rwpatterson
Valued Contributor III

I you' ve whacked the key, can' t you just delete it?? Try that, then installing and uninstalling the newer version.

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!
See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com
Not applicable

Did that. Can still not uninstall. No uninstall button, and via change as stated above.
rwpatterson
Valued Contributor III

Oh well. I' m out of ideas. Good luck.

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!
See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com
vanc
New Contributor II

Change this registry value to 0. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{C2FAE67B-9C91-4C88-91C6-37E4D5F50FE9}\NoRemove NoRemove tells Windows to not show the " Uninstall" button. If set 0, uninstall button should appear.
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