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Uninstalling the MSMQ Service

The NServiceBus.PowerShell modules provide a simple mechanism for installing and configuring the MSMQ service to suit NServiceBus. Particular does not provide an uninstall for this as there are built-in removal options within the Windows operating system.

The removal instructions vary depending on the operating system and are detailed below.

Before proceeding

When the MSMQ service is uninstalled the following actions are also carried out:

  • All existing queues and queue configuration information are deleted
  • All messages contained in those queue and the system dead letter queue (DLQ) are deleted

Dependent services

Services in Microsoft Windows can be configured to depend on each other. Prior to removing MSMQ, ensure that no services depend on MSMQ. To do this

  • Load the Windows Services MMC snapin Services.msc,
  • Right click on Message Queuing in the list of services
  • Check the Dependencies tab in the window to see if any dependencies exist

Alternatively this can be done from PowerShell with the following command:

(Get-Service MSMQ).DependentServices

Removal instructions

Interactive removal

Windows 2012/Windows 2016

  • Open Server Manager
  • From the manage menu, click the Remove Roles and Features
  • This will open the "Remove Roles and Features" Wizard
  • Click Next until the Features option is shown
  • Scroll down, deselect the Message Queuing option, and click Next
  • Click the Remove Button to complete the removal.

A reboot may be required to finalize the changes.

Windows 8/Windows 10

  • Open the Programs option from Control Panel
  • Under Programs and Features click on Turn Windows features on or off
  • Scroll down and deselect the Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) Server option and then click OK

Reboot to finalize the changes.

Removal using DISM.exe

DISM.exe is the command line tool Microsoft provides for enabling and disabling Windows Features such as the MSMQ subsystem on Windows and Windows Server.

DISM.exe requires admin privileges so all the commands listed should be run from an admin command prompt.

To list which MSMQ features are enabled:

DISM /Online /Get-Features /Format:Table | FINDSTR "^MSMQ-"

The output will be similar to this:

MSMQ-Container                                        | Enabled
MSMQ-Server                                           | Enabled
MSMQ-Triggers                                         | Disabled
MSMQ-ADIntegration                                    | Disabled
MSMQ-HTTP                                             | Disabled
MSMQ-Multicast                                        | Disabled
MSMQ-DCOMProxy                                        | Disabled
WCF-MSMQ-Activation45                                 | Disabled

To disable a feature execute the following:

DISM /Online /Disable-Feature /FeatureName:<FeatureName>

Once a feature is removed, reboot the system to finalize the changes.

Removal from a PowerShell prompt

Windows 8 and higher and Windows Server 2012 and higher ship with a PowerShell module for managing installed features that mirrors the DISM.exe command line functions.

The following PowerShell script uses the DISM Module to remove any MSMQ features form the system.

Import-Module DISM
Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online |
 ? FeatureName -Match MSMQ |
 ? State -EQ Enabled | % {
	 Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName $_.FeatureName -NoRestart
}

The script is suppressing restarts to stop a prompt being shown for each feature as it is removed. Once the script has completed the system should be restarted to finalize the changes.

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