How to uninstall MS SQL Server 2005 manually

STEP 1: Make sure you have you have ‘Microsoft SQL Server Setup Support Files component’ installed in the server.

Open ‘Add/Remove Programs’ and check whether Microsoft SQL Server Setup Support Files component is listed there, if it’s there you can proceed to Step 2.

Otherwise, you will have to install it from the MS SQL Server 2005 installation media.
STEP 2: Run “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\ARPWrapper.exe” /Remove - in the command prompt.

This will evoke the MS SQL Uninstall program and uninstall all the MS SQL server components one by one.

STEP 3: Now it’s time to uninstall the support components.

Unistall them in the order specified below:

- MSXML 6.0 Parser
- SQLXML4
- Microsoft SQL Server VSS Writer
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility
- Anything else that is related to SQL Server 2005, except for the Microsoft SQL Server Native Client component and for the Microsoft SQL Server Setup Support Files component.