Uninstalling R manually

Sometimes there are problems uninstalling older versions of R. In these cases, R may be uninstalled manually. To do this one has to remove the directory containing the R binaries and additionally removing some registry entries. You need administrator privileges to be able to do this! Be very careful, manipulating the registry can leave you with a nonworking system!

As an example, here is what needs to be done to manually remove R 2.12.2 completely. (Administrator privileges are needed to perform these operations)

  1. Delete the home directory of the R version you want to remove (typically C:\Program Files\R\R-2.12.2)
  2. Remove the each one of following registry entries (depending on your installation not all of them might exist)
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\R-core\R]
;Delete only the indicated values, not the registry key itself
"InstallPath"="C:\\Program Files\\R\\R-2.12.2"
"Current Version"="2.12.2"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\R-core\R\2.12.2]
;Delete only the indicated values, not the registry key itself
"InstallPath"="C:\\Program Files\\R\\R-2.12.2"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\R-core\R64]
;Delete only the indicated values, not the registry key itself
"InstallPath"="C:\\Program Files\\R\\R-2.12.2"
"Current Version"="2.12.2"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\R-core\R64\2.12.2]
;Delete only the indicated values, not the registry key itself
"InstallPath"="C:\\Program Files\\R\\R-2.12.2"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\R for Windows 2.12.2]
;delete this registry key completely!

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