The primary reason to uninstall a protection agent is to stop protecting data on a computer. You can uninstall a protection agent by using DPM Administrator Console or by uninstalling it locally on the protected computer. However, it is recommended that you uninstall a protection agent using DPM Administrator Console whenever possible. Uninstalling from the console keeps irrelevant “unable to connect” alerts from being generated and automatically removes the record of the computer from the Agents tab.

Uninstalling a protection agent using DPM Administrator Console involves three tasks. Following this process ensures that DPM monitors only currently protected computers and that it is not using disk space to store replicas and recovery points that you no longer need:

  1. Remove all protection group members associated with the protected computer.

  2. Uninstall the protection agent from the protected computer.

  3. Reboot the protected computer.

    Note
    The user has the choice to auto-reboot the protected computer.

You can also uninstall a protection agent locally from a protected computer. You might want to use this procedure if you cannot access a protection agent in DPM Administrator Console.

To remove protection group members associated with a protected computer

  1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Protection on the navigation bar.

  2. In the Group by drop-down list, select Computer.

  3. Remove all protected data sources associated with the computer.

    Note
    When you remove the last member of a protection group, the group is automatically removed from DPM.

To uninstall a protection agent

  1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Management on the navigation bar.

  2. On the Agents tab, select the computer you want to remove the protection agent from.

  3. In the Actions pane, click Uninstall.

  4. In the Uninstall Agents dialog box, click Uninstall Agents and click Next.

  5. In the Enter Credentials dialog box, type the user name and password for a domain account that is a member of the local administrators group on all selected computers, and then click OK.

  6. Choose whether you want to automatically restart the computer or whether you want to manually restart the computer after the protection agent has been uninstalled.

    A status box is displayed to indicate whether the uninstallation is successful. You cannot close this box until after uninstallation has either succeeded or failed. For information about resolving agent installation failures, see the DPM 2007 Troubleshooting Guide at (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=66740).

To uninstall a protection agent locally

  1. In Control Panel, click Add or Remove Programs.

  2. In Change or Remove Programs, click Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Protection Agent, and then click Remove.

  3. Reboot the computer after the protection agent has been uninstalled.

    Note
    When you locally uninstall a protection agent from a computer, DPM Administrator Console continues to list the computer on the Agents tab, with a status of Error.

See Also