Manual removal of the SCCM client

As much as I love it, it may occasionally be necessary to remove the System Center Configuration Manager client.  I recently had a customer who could not get a machine to upgrade from 2007 to 2012 and after attempting many things we did a manual clean down of the client then the 2012 client installed just fine.  If you need to remove the client you can do so fairly easily by running ccmsetup.exe /uninstall.  Ccmsetup should exist on all clients, usually under the windows folder.  In the event that the command line doesn’t work here is a list of things I usually check and remove to manually clean-up all the traces of the client so I can try a fresh install.

 

1. SMS Agent Host Service

2. CCMSetup service (if present)

3. \windows\ccm directory

4. \windows\ccmsetup directory

5. \windows\ccmcache directory

6. \windows\smscfg.ini

7. \windows\sms*.mif (if present)

8. HKLM\software\Microsoft\ccm registry keys

9. HKLM\software\Microsoft\CCMSETUP registry keys

10. HKLM\software\Microsoft\SMS registry keys

11. root\cimv2\sms WMI namespace

12. root\ccm WMI namespace

13.  In Task Scheduler library, under "Microsoft" delete the "Configuration Manager" folder and any tasks within it.

14. In the Machine Certificate store delete any certs under the SMS\certificates folder

** I have been told that following these steps on a thin client PC has caused some issues.  I don't have any thin clients to play with so I am not able to verify at this time.  Use cautiously if you are trying this on a thin client and if you have any findings of interest please add the in the comments below.

* Updated 9/30 to add WMI info

* 4/25/16 - ThinPC concerns

*1/19/17 - Task Scheduler check added

*6/22/17 - Certs removal