VMware SRM 5.8.1 Embedded Database refuses to uninstall

by | Nov 8, 2016 | SRM, VMware

VMware SRM 5.8.1 Embedded Database refuses to uninstall. Clicking uninstall in ‘Control Panel – Programs and Features’ showed a progress bar going forward and then rolling back. Afterwards ‘Control Panel – Programs and Features’ showed that the embedded PostgreSQL was still installed.

So I tried it through the command line with the purpose of generating a log file:

msiexec /l*a c:\temp\uninst.log /x VMware-SRM-Postgres.msi

The log file shows a 1603 error code in the end but msiexec error 1603 is a very generic failure error which does not give a direction to search for.

Microsoft msiexec error codes:

ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE1603A fatal error occurred during installation.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa376931(v=vs.85).aspx

Going up in the log file, somewhere halfway there is a remark that the “C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Embedded Database\data\postgresql.conf” file cannot be found.

I created the postgresql.conf file in the “C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Embedded Database\data\” and tried the msiexec uninstall again. Now the uninstall succeeded.