In the "NIPM Era", removing all NI Software is very tricky. First, you run "Add/Remove Programs" from Windows, go to NI Software, and try to get it to Remove All (this sometimes takes more than one pass, as you might have forgotten to ask it to remove updates). This, in turn, invokes NIPM which does all the work -- NIPM itself "shows up" in the list of files, but cannot be selected (for obvious logical reasons).
Once everything is gone, NIPM still shows up in Programs and Features, but now the "Remove" checkbox is not disabled. If you select it, you get Dire Warnings, but this is the only way to remove the "last" piece of NI Software (except when it isn't, but that's another story).
It would be nice if this process could be simplified. One way to do this is to have NIPM detect that you have asked to remove everything except NIPM (because it is disabled), and have a Dialog Box pop up and say "Are you attempting to remove all NI Software, including NIPM?". You could issue all the Dire Warnings at this point, and if the user chooses "Yes", you could do the appropriate two-step removal process, first removing "everything else", and when done, removing NIPM. I realize that software removal, like software installation, sometimes requires a Reboot and "post-boot-up" code to "clean things up", but am confident that NI could figure out how to do this safely.
Bob Schor
