How to uninstall a program via command prompt in Windows
For those of us who like working with shortcuts more often on Windows System. Here are the following steps on how to uninstall a program via the command prompt in Windows, and the Control Panel. We will be performing these steps via the Control Panel and WMIC command. Please see How to query a list of installed programs in Windows, How to find Computer Model and Serial Number, and How to Find BIOS Serial Number and System Information on Windows 11.
Via the appwiz.cpl command
You can use the appwiz.cpl command to launch the Control Panel applet for Programs and Features or the “Add or Remove Programs” as shown below. This window allows users to view, uninstall, change, or repair software that is installed on their computer.
To do this, hold down the Windows Start Key and press “R” to bring up the “Run” dialog or search for run directly from the search window.
Type “appwiz.cpl“, then press “Enter“.
This will automatically open the Uninstall or Change a Program window from the Control Panel.
Double click on any program you want to uninstall and uninstall it.
Also, see Get a list of installed programs locally or remotely in Windows, and PowerShell Script: Uninstalling Applications Made Easy.
Remove a program with the WMIC command
Alternatively, you could also use the wmic command in Windows. This is a command-line utility that provides a unified interface for Windows management tasks. It stands for Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line.
WMIC allows you to access a wide range of system resources and settings, and it is often used for system administration, monitoring, and troubleshooting
We can also use the wmic command prompt tool in the following ways to uninstall a program. Open the Command Prompt as an administrator. In the Command Prompt window, type wmic and press Enter as shown below.
This loads the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Command-line tool. Henceforth, the commands identified by WMIC can now be uninstalled via the Command Prompt. To perform this, enter the command.
List all installed Products
To list all installed programs, you can use the following command:
product get name
The command lists all the apps that can be removed with this method. Identify the name of the program you want to uninstall. To uninstall a program, use the following command.
product where name="name of program" call uninstall
Where the “name of the program is replaced with the actual program name without any quote as shown below. This will prompt a Y or N Uninstall question, select y to uninstall as shown below.
After the installation is complete,
When executed correctly, you should see a ReturnValue=0 and a message that says “Method execution successful.”
Also, we may also want to uninstall a program in an automated way that does not require any user interaction. In this way, we will utilize the wmic product commands. Here are the syntaxes (commands to perform this).
wmic product where "description='program name' " uninstall
The “wmic product” get lists all the installed programs in the command prompt. as shown below.
Before using this method, ensure the program can be identified by the WMI as shown in the list before.
Note: Nonetheless, Keep the following in mind when using the wmic command to uninstall a program.
- Ensure to give the correct program name or else it will not work.
- If the program has the version embedded in the name, please enter it that way.
Also, the find string command “findstr” can be used in combination with wmic command.
With a value of Zero return, the uninstallation was successful.
I hope you found this blog post on uninstalling a program via command prompt in Windows helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.
