Uninstalling legacy Hosts

It might seem to be a cumbersome job to upgrade Hosts running on computers located in non-managed/foreign networks that can only be reached with the use of Netop. Especially in case where you are not certain about the Host version that you want to upgrade from. Legacy Host versions (from v.9.1 and earlier) may have been installed using the InstallShield installation method used prior to the introduction of support for Windows Installer.

Windows Installer does not handle un-installation of this type of Host installation. So in these cases the un-installation of the Host needs to be done in a special way. Upgrade of the Host from within a Guest is a convenient way and is really possible also when the only connection method is using Netop.

The Host to be used for the upgrade must have been configured and packed with Pack'n Deploy and the resulting msi and mst files must be available for the deployment. These files are to be  packed together with the files Kite.ico, Netop_CleanerForce.exe, Elevator.cmd, Elevator.ps1, install.cmd and Sleep.exe into the self-extracting file UpgradeHostFromGuest.exe.

The tool uses PowerShell in order to elevate the script to gain administrative rights in case User Access Control is enabled on the Host computer.

Connect to the distant Host and use the File Manager to transfer UpgradeHostFromGuest.exe to a folder of your choice on the Host computer. Close the File Manager and with Windows Explorer in the Host screen run UpgradeHostFromGuest.exe; it will prompt you for administrative rights. The running Host will disconnect the Guest and close. The install script attempts to uninstall any existing Netop module prior to installing the new upgraded Host. After a minute or two the new Host ought to be up and running so that you can re-connect to it.