Plugins persist after uninstall

Rhino for Windows
#1

A question -

How do I get rid of plugins that I’ve uninstalled from Rhino?

I just uninstalled the demo of VisualArq and I still have the toolbar. I uncheck VisualArq in the toolbar list but I still have VisualArq at the top of my screen. And I don’t want it to persist in my toolbar list.

Whenever I open V6 I have to wait for Rhino to try and load FireRender which doesn’t exist on my computer. If I uninstall V6 and reinstall it, the splash screen for FireRender is still there.

It seems this is a weakness in the way Rhino handles plugins

#2

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Installing and Uninstalling works.

Since the Rhino installer did not add those third-party plug-ins, uninstalling Rhino CAN NOT remove them.
That just not how uninstall works. It can only remove the unmodified files that the installer added. It does not remove settings, additions, or any file that was modified.

I suspect you can stop the VA toolbars from loading by running Options in Rhino, Toolbars > Find the VA toolbar collection file, and Close it.

For the plug-in, Options > Plug-ins > change the list filter to Plug-ins that do not ship with Rhino, and disable it.

#3

You’re surely correct in saying that I don’t understand these things, or anything else that goes on under the hood. But when I uninstall a plugin for C4D or SketchUp … it’s gone. The traces of it don’t keep showing up after I’ve banished it to plugin hell.

#4

Sadly, there is no universal standard for how these sorts of add-on tools are installed, implemented, or removed.

For the main Rhino application itself, we use Windows Installer Service tools.
As to plug-ins, that is up to each individual developer.

Did my recommendations work for you?

#5

Yes, thank you. That got rid of VisualArq.
The Error loading - FireRender.rhp spashscreen persists but I’m resigned to that.

#6

Simply uncheck this plugin to prevent loading it.

#7

The FireRender.rhp isn’t in the plugin list. It doesn’t exist anywhere in my computer as far as I can tell. I think it may be emanating from a black hole in outer space. It’s only a screen that appears when I open Rhino V6.

#8

You might search the registry and see if there are entries related to that… It might be in

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\McNeel\Rhinoceros\6.0\Plug-Ins

If you click on a key name (guid) you will see some info in the panel on the right. If you see anything that looks like FireRender, you can probably safely delete that key. You might want to do a search of the entire registry to see if you find anything else related to FireRender…

image
image.png1224×471 49.8 KB

Oh, and you might also check Windows Add/Remove programs and see if by chance it actually got installed and registered with Windows…