knuckle05
asked on
Password protect uninstallation of application
Hi All,
This is a tough one. I'd give more points if I could.
I want the Uninstaller (not VB's uninstaller) to prompt for a password (password would be the Admin password of the application itself, which is setup the first time my app is run, stored and encrypted in the registry), prior to performing the uninstallation.
Anyhow, I've used Inno Setup to create my setup file. If anyone is familiar with this setup utility, and could assist me here, I would be forever grateful.
I imagine it would take some tweaking of the compiled Uninstallation .dat file....quite the difficult task.
Thx!
This is a tough one. I'd give more points if I could.
I want the Uninstaller (not VB's uninstaller) to prompt for a password (password would be the Admin password of the application itself, which is setup the first time my app is run, stored and encrypted in the registry), prior to performing the uninstallation.
Anyhow, I've used Inno Setup to create my setup file. If anyone is familiar with this setup utility, and could assist me here, I would be forever grateful.
I imagine it would take some tweaking of the compiled Uninstallation .dat file....quite the difficult task.
Thx!
Ryan Chong
You can't, as the files installed on your machine can be deleted physically if you want to delete it manually. You can't prevent a user to delete your installed files, UNLESS you set the permission so that your logon user cannot delete the application files you had installed.
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ASKER
Hey vinnyd79,
Thanks for this suggestion, I will try it out ASAP and report back here.
I understand that someone could just delete the physical files from the drive, the thing is, there are some other "monitor type" services installed with my program that aren't easily detectable as I install them in the system folder.
The application I wrote is a web browser for kids, and included with it is a monitoring service that blocks the use of IE and / or other mainstream browsers.
With a password protected uninstall file, this will at least preserve these monitors that run at startup. Not to say that they still couldn't be bypassed, I mean, they do show up as a running process in the task manager....anyhow, thx for your help, and I'll post back soon!
Thanks for this suggestion, I will try it out ASAP and report back here.
I understand that someone could just delete the physical files from the drive, the thing is, there are some other "monitor type" services installed with my program that aren't easily detectable as I install them in the system folder.
The application I wrote is a web browser for kids, and included with it is a monitoring service that blocks the use of IE and / or other mainstream browsers.
With a password protected uninstall file, this will at least preserve these monitors that run at startup. Not to say that they still couldn't be bypassed, I mean, they do show up as a running process in the task manager....anyhow, thx for your help, and I'll post back soon!
ASKER
vinnyd79,
Pure genius!
It works mint, I had to make a few small additions, specifically some error handling in case I cancelled the process (as it would leave files behind) but it works great!
Question: It seems fairly simple to just weld the 2 together, but how come appending the original Inno setup file to the back of my PW app did not cause the EXE to crash? I was really surprised that it worked...
I'm really curious as to how you came up with this solution...pls give me some insight.
Thx!
Pure genius!
It works mint, I had to make a few small additions, specifically some error handling in case I cancelled the process (as it would leave files behind) but it works great!
Question: It seems fairly simple to just weld the 2 together, but how come appending the original Inno setup file to the back of my PW app did not cause the EXE to crash? I was really surprised that it worked...
I'm really curious as to how you came up with this solution...pls give me some insight.
Thx!