PowerShell: Uninstalling Pester 3.0

Microsoft by default installs an obsolete version of Pester on Windows (Pester 3.x). For example on one of my machines (Windows 11) the version of Pester installed is 3.4.0 (2016 Pester). In fact, Pester 3.4.0 is installed for x64 and x86 (32-bit) versions of PowerShell. To uninstall Pester 3.4.0 means that the x64 and x86 installs have to be uninstalled.

Detecting the Available Versions of Pester Installed

The following PowerShell displays available versions of Pester installed:

(Get-Module -ListAvailable Pester).Version

The default version of Pester installed on my Windows 11 host is as follows:

Uninstalling Pester 3.x

The problem with Pester 3.x is that it installed as part the O.S. and it cannot be uninstalled with Uninstall-Module (this won't work: Uninstall-Module -Name Pester). The following script will understand all 3.x versions of Pester on a machine:

#Requires -RunAsAdministrator

function Uninstall-PesterInstance {

    param(

        [Parameter(mandatory=$true)]

        [string] $pesterFolderPath

    )    

    takeown /F $pesterFolderPath /A /R

    icacls $pesterFolderPath /reset

    # Grant permissions to group, Administrators, via SID.

    # This handles localiztion on non-U.S. Windows installations

    icacls $pesterFolderPath /grant "*S-1-5-32-544:F" /inheritance:d /T

    Remove-Item -Path $pesterFolderPath -Recurse -Force -Confirm:$false    

}

[string] $bitness32ProgramFiles = ${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}

[string] $bitness64ProgramFiles = $env:ProgramFiles

[string[]] $programFilePaths = $bitness32ProgramFiles, $bitness64ProgramFiles

foreach ($programFilePath in $programFilePaths) {

    [string] $pester3xFolderPath = "$programFilePath\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\Pester"

    if (Test-Path -Path $pester3xFolderPath -PathType Container) {        

        [System.IO.DirectoryInfo[]] $pesterDirectories =

           Get-ChildItem -Path $pester3xFolderPath -Filter '3.*'

        foreach ($pesterDirectory in $pesterDirectories) {

            Uninstall-PesterInstance $pesterDirectory.FullName

        }

    }

}

The first line of the above script uses "#Requires -RunAsAdministrator" to mandate the script runs with administrator credentials. Pester 3.x is installed for Windows and can only be uninstalled by an administrator (see PowerShell: Requiring a Script to Run as Administrator).

The code above is broken into a loop the iterate through all Pester 3.x version found in program files targeting x86 and x64 bit PowerShell:

For each instance of Pester 3.x install the Uninstall-PesterIntance method is invoked to physically delete the Pester 3.x folders recursively: