How to properly and fully uninstall TwinCAT 3?

Question

Disclaimer: I am aware that the "how to" questions are not very appreciated here but it was the most effective way to sum up my question and make it available for other people if an answer is found.

I have tried on multiple occasions to remove TwinCAT from a computer in order to reinstall it after some bugs.

But everytime it's been a huge hassle.

The official Beckhoff website says that running the installation program again and selecting the uninstall button works but the thing is that it only removes TwinCAT 3 and not its modules. At first I thought it was because TwinCAT XAE Shell was installed as well and the modules depended of XAE and not TwinCAT3 so I uninstalled XAE but the modules are still there.

After that I still end up with all these programs:

I find it very odd (if not extremely annoying) that the installation program is able to install so many programs but not uninstall them.

One time I tried to completely remove TwinCAT (and all its modules) from my computer and uninstalling the programs from the Windows Configuration Panel wasn't enough as some of the program stayed in the list after running the un-installation process (which meant the files were still present in my Program Files). It was also still present in my Visual Studio Extensions and couldn't be removed from Visual Studio. So I tried to manually delete their files, some of them were protected by some unidentified process (or processes?) I wasn't able to locate (it wasn't in my startup list).

The program/files that caused the most trouble uninstalling were:

• Beckhoff TE9000 TwinSAFE Editor
• Beckhoff TwinCAT AML Data Exchange (gives the error the specified account already exists)
• The file C:/TwinCAT/3.1/Driver/TcCnc.sys (file is being used by another program)

After a windows search the remaining files are located (this a non exhaustive list) in C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local, a lot in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL. And there is such an overwhelming amount of occurrences in the Registry Editor that I'm not going to attempt on listing them.

So I had to manually remove all Beckhoff mentions in my regedit and windows folders (such as Program Files, AppData etc).

After that, I was finally able to delete all TwinCAT components...

Note: CCleanerPro was unable to delete TwinCAT too.

This is very much the behavior of a virus, so I find it weird that there isn't a better way to do this...

Have you found a way to quickly uninstall TwinCAT from a computer?

Answer 1

I've just uninstalled Twincat 3 (XAE), following the official guide.

1. Open Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features,

2. Sort the list by name (all Beckhoff-related apps will be grouped together),

3. Start uninstalling them one by one (Hint: look at the app size, uninstall the app with smaller size first),

   3.1. Some components need restarting the computer, click No (reboot later),

4. After uninstalling every Beckhoff-related app, restart the computer.

Done.

I've checked Program Files (x86) and AppData, everything is clean.

Answer 2

I have run into similar issues, mainly when wanting to install a newer version of TwinCAT. Often the update doesn't work correctly.

I've resolved to using BoxStarter to at least automate the removal of TwinCAT. It may not be as thorough as using CCleanerPro, RevoUninstaller or BcUninstaller, but I find it usually does enough to get a cleaner install.

I've created a gist of the script which you can find here: https://gist.github.com/koosvanw/5b6933945399ec727b61531de7a6a794

You can either download the script and run it with a local BoxStarter installation, or click the provided link to launch the webapplication which then starts running the uninstall script.

Let me know if you run into any issues with the script.

Answer 3

When I've hit this issue the advice from Beckhoff UK was to use Revo Uninstaller.

I found the “free” version from PortableApps.Com did the job, as yet no other side effects of the uninstall noticed.