How to Uninstall a Protection Agent

Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

The primary reason to uninstall a protection agent is to stop protecting data on a computer. You can uninstall a protection agent by using DPM Administrator Console or by uninstalling it locally on the protected computer. However, we recommend that you uninstall a protection agent by using DPM Administrator Console whenever possible. If you uninstall an agent locally on the protected computer, you might get irrelevant “Unable to connect” alerts. And, uninstalling a protection agent by using DPM Administrator Console automatically removes the computer from the Agents tab.

Uninstalling a protection agent by using DPM Administrator Console involves three steps. Following this process ensures that DPM monitors only currently protected computers and is not using disk space to store replicas and recovery points that you no longer need:

1. Remove all protection group members associated with the protected computer.

2. Uninstall the protection agent from the protected computer.

3. Restart the protected computer.

   Note

   The user has the choice to auto-reboot the protected computer.

You can also uninstall a protection agent locally from a protected computer. You might need to use this procedure if you cannot access a protection agent in DPM Administrator Console.

1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Protection on the navigation bar.

2. In the Group by drop-down list, select Computer.

3. Remove all protected data sources associated with the computer.

   Note

   When you remove the last member of a protection group, the group is automatically removed from DPM.

1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Management on the navigation bar.

2. On the Agents tab, select the computer that you want to uninstall the protection agent from.

3. In the Actions pane, click Uninstall.

4. In the Uninstall Agents dialog box, click Uninstall Agents, and then click Next.

5. In the Enter Credentials dialog box, type the user name, password, and domain for an account that is a member of the local Administrators group on all selected computers, and then click OK.

6. Choose whether you want to automatically restart the computer or whether you want to manually restart the computer after the protection agent has been uninstalled.

   A status box is displayed to indicate whether the uninstallation is successful. You cannot close this box until after uninstallation has either succeeded or failed. For information about resolving agent installation failures, see the DPM 2010 Troubleshooting Guide at (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=179173).

1. In Control Panel, click Add or Remove Programs.

2. In Change or Remove Programs, click Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Protection Agent, and then click Remove.

3. Reboot the computer after the protection agent has been uninstalled.

   Note

   When you locally uninstall a protection agent from a computer, DPM Administrator Console continues to list the computer on the Agents tab, with a status of Error.

1. For a 32-bit operating system, at the command prompt type
   Msiexec /x {07CCDE6A-1D92-2C9C-D091-9E682643ABCC}

2. For 64-bit operating system, at the command prompt type
   Msiexec /x {72BF00D8-53E0-1539-F523-4347082BCC11}

   Note

   In Windows 2008 Server and Windows Vista, run the command from an elevated command prompt.

1. For 32-bit operating system, at the command prompt type
   Msiexec /x {07CCDE6A-1D92-2C9C-D091-9E682643ABCC} /qn /REBOOT=ReallySupress

   For 64-bit operating system, at the command prompt type
   Msiexec /x {72BF00D8-53E0-1539-F523-4347082BCC11} /qn /REBOOT=ReallySupress

   Note

   In Windows 2008 Server and Windows Vista, run the command from an elevated command prompt.

How to Remove Protection Group Members

Managing Protection Agents
What Is a Protection Agent?