[Qgis-developer] Windows Installation broken - and cannot uninstall

[Alex Mandel]

On 02/08/2012 12:39 AM, Ole Nielsen wrote:
> Hi QGis developers
> 
> 
> We have just installed QGis on 4 Windows machines in our office to explore
> its potential for sustainable capacity building in an international
> government aid context.
> We installed from the QGIS website the option OSGeo4W Installer because we
> are also doing development.
> However, when attempting to run QGIS we all get the same error:
> 
> *This application has failed to start because ippqj-5.3.dll was not found.
> Re-installing the application may fix this problem.*
> 
> However, we cannot re-install  without first un-installing and have not
> been able to find a method for un-installing the faulty QGIS installation.
> 
> As an aside, we noticed that both QGIS 1.7.3 and QGIS 1.9.90 appear as
> icons.
> 
> 
> Can someone please help us
> 
>    - Uninstall QGIS
>    - Let us know how to install a working version
> 
> This is important for the QGIS project because the lack of good
> installation/uninstallation procedures fuel the perception that Open Source
> projects aren't serious contenders to the traditional commercial products.
> 
> Many thanks for you help
> Ole Nielsen

The ippqj-5.3.dll error is a known bug which can be solved by
reinstalling the one package in osgeo4w that relates to it.

No un-installation is required when working with OSGeo4w normally.
However if you wish to uninstall simply delete the C:\OSGeo4w folder.
OSGeo4w has very few registry entries (1-4 I think)

If you got QGIS 1.7.3 and QGIS 1.9.90 you probably did a full install of
everything in OSGeo4w. Which means you got the stable and the
development versions of QGIS and a whole lot of other stuff. It also
means you got a lot of other stuff that sometimes doesn't behave right
all together (an unsolved puzzle).

The suggested method would be to use the Quick/Simple setup option to
start, and then re-run the setup.exe as you discover you need additional
libraries for programming purposes.

I'll make sure to post a guide I wrote up for my students doing QGIS
python development later this week which will give a good sense of what
else you might want.

Thanks,
Alex