How to Uninstall SharePoint 2013? – Complete Steps!

It’s a pretty common question, and we stuck here often: How to Uninstall SharePoint 2013 completely from the server? Remove Server option From Central Administration >> Servers in Farm page? NO!! You can’t uninstall SharePoint 2013 with this option. The “Remove server” option must be used only when a particular server is no longer available, and you want to remove it from your SharePoint farm.

Follow these steps to uninstall SharePoint 2013:

• Go to Control Panel (Shortcut: Appwiz.cpl), Pick Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2013 (or Server!), and click on the “Change” button.
•  In the Change your installation of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 page, Choose Remove, and then click Continue.
• A confirmation message appears. Click Yes to remove SharePoint 2013.
  
• A warning message appears. Click OK to continue.
  
• Watch the uninstallation progress…
  
• Wait for the “Successfully uninstalled” message.
  

But wait! When you uninstall SharePoint 2013 with the above steps, most of the files and folders are deleted. However, some objects need our manual intervention.

Clear IIS Sites and Virtual Folders, Remove physical files

We got to manually delete web applications created in IIS and their virtual folders from the file system.

Delete Search Index Files:

In search index servers, remove the search index manually. To get search index files location, run these PowerShell cmdlets:

$SearchInstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance
$SearchInstance.Components

Delete IIS Log Files:

Delete 14/15 Hive customizations:
 

Delete the SharePoint Databases from Database Server:

Uninstalling SharePoint 2013 dismounts SharePoint databases from its web applications. But it doesn’t remove any physical file stored in the database server. So, remove them all!

TechNet reference on Uninstall SharePoint 2013: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262874.aspx