How do I manually uninstall legacy LAPS on clients?

Question

Windows is blocking my LAPS .msi so I cannot use it's uninstall function to remove from clients workstations. How do I uninstall manually? GPO doesn't work anymore either.

Answer 1

Hi Andrew,

To manually excise Legacy LAPS when the MSI engine is strictly inaccessible, you must surgically remove the functional components and the registry hooks that the Group Policy Client (GPSVC) relies on. First, open an elevated command prompt and run regsvr32 /u /s "C:\Program Files\LAPS\CSE\AdmPwd.dll" to unregister the COM object. Immediately delete the folder C:\Program Files\LAPS to remove the binaries. Crucially, you must prevent the Group Policy engine from attempting to load the now-missing extension by deleting the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions{D76B9641-3288-4f75-942D-087DE603E3EA}. If you leave this key, clients will report GPO processing errors.

Finally, since you cannot use msiexec to scrub the ARP (Add/Remove Programs) entry, you may need to manually delete the display record from the registry to avoid false reporting in your inventory tools. Navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall and delete the key {97E2CA7B-B657-4FF7-A6DB-30ECC73E1E28} (for 64-bit LAPS) or {A310F138-0138-450F-A16A-22C39B8F42F9} (for 32-bit). This does not uninstall the software but removes the "ghost" entry remaining after your manual file deletion. If the "block" you are experiencing is due to the new Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) built into Windows, ensure you are not inadvertently breaking the Legacy Emulation Mode if you still rely on the old schema.

Hope you found something useful in the answer. If it helped you get more insight into the issue, please consider accepting it. Thank you and have a nice day!

VP

Answer 2

To manually uninstall legacy LAPS from client workstations, you can follow these steps based on how the software was initially installed:

1. If you installed legacy LAPS using the MSI installer package:
   You can run the following command from the command line with administrative privileges:

      msiexec.exe /q /uninstall {97E2CA7B-B657-4FF7-A6DB-30ECC73E1E28}
   

2. If you installed legacy LAPS by manually copying and registering the legacy LAPS CSE AdmPwd.dll file:
   You need to manually unregister and then delete the AdmPwd.dll file. Run the following commands:

      regsvr32.exe /s /u AdmPwd.dll
      delete C:\windows\system32\AdmPwd.dll
   

   If you copied AdmPwd.dll to a different location, adjust the path accordingly. You can find the location by checking the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions\{D76B9641-3288-4f75-942D-087DE603E3EA} for the DllName value.

Make sure to run these commands in an elevated command prompt to ensure you have the necessary permissions to uninstall the software.