How can I rollback XPe from FP07 to SP2?

Well, it appears we probably could have done a better job in our uninstall process since we're seeing some questions in the newsgroup and elsewhere wrt developers trying to rollback from FP07 to SP2 and instead they're inadvertently uninstalling the entire tools suite.

To be clear, it is possible to rollback, though it may not be intuitive and not easily discoverable. For that, you have my apologies and at least you can have the satisfaction of knowing it's a lesson learned.

You probably already know that there is an entry in the Add/Remove Programs (ARP) control panel applet that you can use to uninstall the XPe product. The problem that has been occurring with some customers is when they click the 'Remove' button for this feature. The expectation of the customer is that when you click this button it will remove just FP2007 and leave you in the state that existed right before you installed the Feature Pack.

In fact what's happening when you just click 'Remove' is that you uninstall the entire feature, for instance if you uninstalled the FP2007 Tools you would end up with no Target Designer, Component Designer, etc...yet you're probably expecting version 807 of the Tools from XPe-SP2 to be on the dev machine.

You can basically look at the FP07 install as an *update* to XPe-SP2. Since it's an update, in order to just remove the *update* to the feature instead of the *entire* feature, you need to check the box at the top of ARP that says 'Show Updates'.

When you check this box, ARP entries will expand to many more entries in the control panel, including expanding the entry for FP2007. The FP2007 entry will now show you two entries under that main feature. The two entries show both an 'Update' entry that refers to SP2 and a "Feature Pack 2007" entry that refers to the update you installed when up upgraded the dev machine from XPe-SP2 to XPe-SP2 FP2007.

To uninstall FP2007 and rollback to XPe-SP2 you need to click the 'Remove' button for the entry labeled "Windows XPe SP2 FP2007 Tools Update". See this screenshot below with the highlighted section i'm referring to. Note that you can also see the difference in the install dates for SP2 (labeled 'Update') and the install date for the Feature Pack. Even without looking at the title of the update I can tell which one is the newest install and therefore the one I want to remove.

Note that rolling back the DB is a separate discussion regarding the script 'dbrestore.vbs' on your FP2007 disk's ValueAdd folder. You will never ever be able to rollback the DB updates through ARP, read more about this script and how to backup and rollback your DB with this blog article..

- Andy