Uninstalling WSS

The final section of this chapter is about removing WSS. You can choose to remove just a single site collection, for example used for your team sites, or you can remove a complete WSS installation and all its databases. If the databases remain, you can later reinstall WSS and reconnect to those databases.

Removing a Site Collection but Leaving the Binary Files

This process removes a given site collection in WSS from its web application, but it does not remove the binary files from the server, nor its database files. For example, you may have a test environment using one web application and a production WSS using another web application on the same physical Windows 2003 server, and now you want to copy the site collection between these web applications.

To remove the test environment, follow these steps:

1. Start the SharePoint Central Administration tool.

2. Open the Application Management page.

3. Click Delete site collection in the SharePoint Site Management section.

4. Click the menu next to the site collection, and select Change Site Collection.

5. Select the site collection to be removed. When you are absolutely sure it is the right one, click OK.

6. Click Delete and then OK to permanently delete the web site.

7. Click OK.

You are now free to use the web application for other site collections. If you have another site collection in the same web application, it will continue to work, since the previous steps just deleted one single site collection, not the complete web application.

Removing a Web Application

This process is very similar to the previous process, but it may have bigger consequences: If you remove an existing web application, all its site collections will also be removed. Note that a web application may have any number of site collections, although the default limit is 15,000. To delete a specific web application follow these steps:

1. Start the SharePoint Central Administration tool.

2. Open the Application Management page.

3. Click Delete Web application in the SharePoint Web Application Management section.

4. Make sure to select the right web application using the menu listed on this page.

5. Choose whether you also want to remove the content databases and/or the virtual IIS web server. Click Delete when you are sure that it is the right web application to remove. Then click OK to accept the deletion of the web application.

Removing WSS Completely

A more drastic method is to remove WSS completely from the Windows 2003 server. This does not actually remove the database, be it SQL Server 2005 Express or the MS SQL Server. If you want to remove these database engines, you must do this manually after WSS is uninstalled.

To remove WSS completely from a Windows 2003 server, follow these steps:

1. Select Start Control Panel Add or Remove Programs.

2. Click the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and then click the Remove button.

3. Complete the removal process. WSS is now gone!

4. Check to see if there are other WSS-related applications that also should be removed (for example, any third-party add-ons).

5. If you also want to remove the database engine, locate its name and click Remove.

Note that this will automatically remove both the WSS and the MS SQL 2005 Express database engines at the same time. However, if you used an SQL Server 2000 or 2005 database, it will not uninstall these database servers, and WSS databases will still remain intact.

When you remove WSS, you also remove the virtual IIS server used by the WSS administrative web site, along with its application pool. However, the default web site remains after the installation, along with its application pool.