Three ways to remove Windows SharePoint Services _ Application Tips

You can remove Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services from a virtual server using HTML Administration or the command-line administration tool. Both of these tools allow you to retain or delete content when you delete Windows SharePoint Services.

Remove Windows SharePoint Services from a virtual server with HTML administration pages

Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Central Administration.
On the Central Administration page, under Virtual Server configuration, click Configure Virtual server settings.
On the Virtual Server List page, select the virtual server that you want to configure.
On the Virtual Server List page, under Virtual Server management, click Remove Windows SharePoint Services from the virtual server.
On the Remove Windows SharePoint Services from Virtual Server page, select one of the following options:
"Delete, but do not delete content databases"
This option removes the Windows SharePoint Services folder from the virtual server only-the content database is fully preserved, so you can reconnect it later with the same virtual server or another virtual server.

Delete, delete content database at the same time
This option removes both the Windows SharePoint Services folder and the content database from the virtual server. You cannot rebuild a Web site that was previously stored on this virtual server unless you have a backup.

Click OK.
To remove Windows SharePoint Services from a virtual server by using the command line

You can remove Windows SharePoint Services from a virtual server by using the Stsdm.exe command-line tool with the UNEXTENDVS operation. The Unextendvs operation takes the-url parameter and optional-deletecontent parameters. When you use UNEXTENDVS but do not use the-deletecontent parameter, the content database remains in place so that you can reconnect to the contents of the virtual server. When the-deletecontent parameter is included, the content database is deleted and the virtual server is removed from the configuration database.

For example, to remove Windows SharePoint Services from a virtual server, but keep the content database, use the UNEXTENDVS action with the following syntax:

Stsadm-o Unextendvs-url http://servername

To remove Windows SharePoint Services from the virtual server and permanently delete the content database, use the UNEXTENDVS action in the following syntax:

Stsadm-o Unextendvs-url http://servername-deletecontent

When you use the UNEXTENDVS operation with the-deletecontent parameter, you cannot reconnect to the site content later.

Uninstall Windows SharePoint Services from the server computer


Note To uninstall Windows SharePoint Services, you must be an administrator on the server computer.


If you want to completely remove Windows SharePoint Services from the server computer, you can remove it by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel. Uninstalling Windows SharePoint Services will not remove any related products that have been installed, such as Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (Windows) (WMSDE). You must uninstall these programs separately.

On the server computer, click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs.
Select Windows SharePoint Services, and then click Delete.