Please assist with details regarding uninstalling

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

Dan M wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a need to uninstall cygwin completely from my system.  I found
> the instructions to do this in the faq/Seting up cygwin/answer #14.  I
> am writing to request more detailed information regarding instructions
> #1 and #2, as I am not a PC programmer and need more specific
> directions. 
> 
> Here is instruction #1 from the faq:
> 
> "1.  Remove all Cygwin services. If a service is currently running, it
> must first be stopped with cygrunsrv -E name, where name is the name of
> the service. Then use cygrunsrv -R name to uninstall the service from
> the registry. Repeat this for all services that you installed. Common
> services that might have been installed are sshd, cron, cygserver,
> inetd, apache, and so on." 
> 
> Here are my questions regarding step #1: 
> 
> A.  How do I tell what services I have installed?  (Basically I
> originally loaded everything, but then I uninstalled/re-installed
> picking just the default, so I believe I have the default).


'cygrunsrv -L' will tell you.


> B.  How do I tell what services are currently running?  (I am running
> Windows XP Home.  Can the program manager tell me this?  If so, what
> specific names do I need to look for in the program manager?) 


'net start'  Look for any services with names like you found from the
above command.  The names could vary a bit but it's still pretty obvious.


> B.  Please confirm:  "Remove all cygwin services" is the same as
> "uninstalling ...[each]... service from the registry".


No.  It's a combination of stopping all running services and then removing
all the installed services.  The former may be a subset of the latter.


> C.  Are these commands simply typed into the command prompt screen?
> When I bring up the command prompt, a path comes up after the C drive
> name.  I get:
> 
> C:\Documents and Settings\Dan>
> 
> Do I need to change this at all or just type the commands after the ">"
> symbol?


It could be done this way but based on your previous questions, I would
say you would have more luck running these from the bash prompt.  You can
get the bash prompt by clicking on the "Cygwin" icon on your desktop or by
typing "C:\cygwin\cygwin.bat" into the prompt you note above, assuming that
you installed Cygwin into the "C:\cygwin" directory.


> Here is instruction #2 from the faq: 
> 
> "2.  Stop the X11 server if it is running, and terminate any Cygwin
> programs that might be running in the background. Remove all mount
> information by typing umount -A and then exit the command prompt and
> ensure that no Cygwin processes remain. Note: If you want to save your
> mount points for a later reinstall, first save the output of mount -m as
> described at http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-utils.html#mount." 
> 
> Here are my questions on instuction #2:
> 
> A.  How do I tell if any cygwin programs are running in the background?


'ps -ef'

Anything that results from that which is not '/usr/bin/bash' or '/usr/bin/ps'
is most likely going to be a background process.


> B.  After I have the answer to my question A, how do I terminate them
> (i.e., the Cygwin programs that are running in the background)?


'kill -9 <PID>' where <PID> is the number in the second column of the line
from 'ps -ef' for the process you want to kill.


> C.  How do I tell if any cygwin processes remain after entering the
> umount command?


'ps -ef'


In all honesty, if you don't know whether you have a service running or not,
you don't recognize any of the service names listed above, and no one else has
installed and/or used Cygwin other than you, you won't have to worry about
stopping or removing any Cygwin service.  These have to be explicitly
set-up and run by you or by invoking a configuration script to do this for
you.  Unless you have done this, you can skip this step.  Ditto for the
background processes.  If you didn't start any, you don't need to look
for any.


-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
838 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

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