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Can't Uninstall Mobicontrol from Andriod Plus

SW
Seth Wirtz
Steel & Pipe Supply

I have a weird issue. I cannot uninstall mobiecontrol. It seems to be stuck in a weird loop. Mobicontrol is installed through the afw#mobicontrol option. But on this handheld it didn't remove all the excess apps like it should have. Mobicontrol works as it should otherwise on this handheld. But I cannot remove it at all.

If I factory reset the handheld it tells me mobicontrol is still installed and then rebuilds the profile up to the home screen with all of the apps it shouldn't have still there. I've tried going through as much SOTI documentation I can find on how to uninstall mobicontrol and it all seems to stem from turning off the device admin under settings/security/device admin. I do not have the option to turn that off. It's grayed out for me. I've tried this in admin mode and user mode.

I've tried various forms of wiping the handheld reset /w and /e. At first I thought /e was going to work because it acted like it was completely wiped and actually brought up the google login screen to where I could type afw#mobicontrol. But when I did this it appeared that the app was already installed and continued to do the same thing.

**Edit**

This is a Zebra TC20 my mistake I thought I added this.

Edited 6 years ago
Android
ANSWERS
MD
Matt Dermody Diamond Contributor
6 years ago

What you're experiencing is Android Enterprise Device Owner at work. When you first enrolled using afw#mobicontrol the AE SOTI agent was downloaded from the Play Store and then registered as the Device Owner on the device. There can only be one DO under AE, unlike DA which allowed for multiple, and only the DO itself can relinquish its status. Therefore, in order for you to remove the Device Owner (the MobiControl agent in this case) from the device, it will need to be unenrolled and removed from whatever MobiControl instance was previously managing it. Otherwise that device will continue to be associated with the previous EMM environment is was registered with. 

This is also very much by design so that enterprise owned assets managed under a COSU or dedicated device management scenario can't simply be taken out of the environment and wiped and then reused for other purposes until they are first purposefully decommissioned by the enterprise that owns them, via the EMM they're managed by. 

RC
Raymond Chan Diamond Contributor
6 years ago

How did you initiate your factory reset or Mobicontrol uninstallation?

What is the brand and model of your device?  Zebra or some other brand?

Did you use/configure Zero-Touch Enrollment (ZTE) or Knox Mobile Enrollment (KME for Samsung devices only) on your devices?

S
SChristian
6 years ago

Hello Seth,

Thank you for your question.

In addition to what @Raymond said, if this is a Zebra device, It would give you an option of Enterprise reset (in most cases). Enterprise Reset won't wipe all the data such as MobiControl Agent. 

Recommended is that you create a Barcode for Factory Reset/Wipe with Zebra Stage and scan the barcode, This will wipe the MobiControl from the device.

Thank you.

SW
Seth Wirtz
6 years ago

I will try this thank you.

SW
Seth Wirtz
6 years ago

Thank Matt, I understood that much and I don't mind that it isn't taking the agent off. My issue originally was that it didn't seem that Mobicontrol installed on this specific handheld correctly. It wasn't disabling all the apps and features that the mobicontrol agent was supposed to. I'm going to try the bar code wipe as suggested in the comments below.

MD
Matt Dermody Diamond Contributor
6 years ago

Do you have a Blacklist profile being applied after enrollment or are you expecting the AEDO enrollment to disable system apps by default? Normally I try to circumvent the AEDO enrollment from disabling system apps because it can be too invasive and can inadvertently disable important OEM applications and services like DataWedge and License Manager on Zebra devices. I would rather have the control to specify which apps I want blacklisted rather than the AEDO enrollment blacklisting them for me. 

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