Uninstalling Firefox silently and remotely for all users
Since Firefox allows users to install to individual profiles, how do admins go about uninstalling it for all users silently and remotely? If all 1000 PCs have 50 users, all with Firefox installed to individual profiles, I can't imagine IT admins would have to find the appdata for each and every user and modify a script for each machine and every user. There must be a simpler way, right? An "Uninstall All" for Firefox?
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Also, we'd want it to remove all traces of anything Firefox related
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I've checked into this and none of our uninstallers have an option to remove user data.
You can run the uninstaller silently though?
Are you on Windows? I can give you instructions for removing profiles.
Just so I understand, you provide users a way to install it to their individual profiles instead of through ARP but don't provide admins an option to uninstall it from all user profiles? How does running the uninstaller help if it has to be done on each and every profile? Or are you saying there is a way to run the uninstaller for every user on the machine at once? I'm not asking how to delete user profiles, I'm asking how to uninstall Firefox from all users since it's profile specific.
> Just so I understand, you provide users a way to install it to their individual profiles instead of through ARP but don't provide admins an option to uninstall it from all user profiles?
From my understanding, this is a common problem for all applications not just Firefox. A user can install something into their profile directory and it's beyond being touched easily by admins. Workarounds I've seen include not allowing certain executables to be run from the profile directory.
Policy works against Firefox regardless of where its installed though, so I don't totally understand the concern.
> How does running the uninstaller help if it has to be done on each and every profile? Or are you saying there is a way to run the uninstaller for every user on the machine at once?
I thought you were asking just if the uninstaller could run silently. We don't have a way for an admin to force Firefox to be uninstalled. Can you give an example of software that does this so I could see what it look slie?
> I'm not asking how to delete user profiles, I'm asking how to uninstall Firefox from all users since it's profile specific.
The only way to do that would be to either run the uninstaller, or look in the registry for the Firefox location and simple remove it.
I'm guessing we're not on the same page if you're asking what other software allows you to uninstall it silently. This is the first standard business software I've come across that does NOT have a full silent uninstaller. You can use Adobe as an example if you need one. I can silently uninstall their software without an issue for all users because they have a cleaner tool so I'm not quite understanding what you're trying to say. Since this post was quite awhile ago now, I've got a command to silently uninstall it, I just have to do it for every profile on every machine. I hope Mozilla creates a cleaner like others have so this doesn't continue to be an issue in the future.
Thanks, I appreciate this info.
I had never heard of an app cleaner like this before.
I'll open a bug and hopefully we can get something like this implemented.