Cannot uninstall manually installed older versions of Firefox - Any tips?
I have manually installed multiple older versions of Firefox for Desktop (Windows 10), as I am translating KB articles and sometimes need any of the twenty latest versions to get screenshots in my language for the translated articles.
When an older version becomes superfluous, I would like to uninstall it from my computer, but that does not work. Even though I see all the older Firefox versions listed in Windows Applications & Features and each of them has an Uninstall button (and a helper.exe file in the uninstall folder in the installation folder each of the versions), the only "action" I see is that I get a warning that the Firefox Helper application is about to make change to the content of my hard drive, and will I allow that? The pop-up asking if I want to refresh Firefox instead of uninstalling, it does NOT appear.
The only time I get a proper response, i.e the Refresh-instead-of-uninstall? pop-up, is when I initiate uninstall of the latest current version of Firefox, in my case Fx132.0.2.
Have anyone else come across this problem?
All Replies (2)
(This is less of a tip and more of a cynical observation...)
As a longtime user of Windows, I don't completely trust installers to keep different versions cleanly separated in the Windows registry. Sometimes versions you already removed will linger, while other times the control panel method will just fail for no good reason.
Using the helper.exe program in the old version folder should actually remove the unwanted installation. It might not clean up well after itself in the Registry, but it sounds like that might already be a bit of a mess.
Thank you jscher2000, for your observation :-) Yes, something is obviously not working on my computer regarding uninstallation. I have been in contact with an ex-colleague, who have explored the same scenario. He installed an older Firefox version in a separate installation folder under C:\Program Files\, and uninstalled it with out any problems, just by using the regular Uninstall button in the Windows Apps and Features panel.
However, the remaining days of my current Windows 10 laptop are numbered, and a new Windows 11 machine has been ordered, so in a few weeks time the whole problem is gone! :-) Unless, of course, it materialises again on my new Win 11 HW.....
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