There was no support, and no google help, no IBM search help, etc. After all the usual things, I went to a system without an existing DD installation.
You can force-reinstall Download Director from here:
https://www-03.ibm.com/isc/esd/dswdown/dldirector/installation_en.html
You can manually run DD here, but I don’t know how to feed it packages:
https://www14.software.ibm.com/dldirector/IBMDownloadDirectorApp.jnlp
There is info on how to uninstall DD here:
https://www-03.ibm.com/isc/esd/dswdown/dldirector/uninstall_en.html
I’m sure these URLs will change in the next forced web redesign, but for now, this should help for people with broken DD installs.
Reinstall info is obscured in convoluted JavaScript, but here’s the uninstall information:
Windows
How to uninstall
- Open a new cmd window, paste the following command and hit enter:
reg DELETE HKCU\Software\Classes\ibmddp /f && rmdir %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\IBM\DD /S /Q- You should see a “The operation completed successfully.” message.
How to verify if Download Director is installed
- Open a new cmd window, paste the following command and hit enter:
(reg query HKCU\Software\Classes\ibmddp 1> NUL 2>&1 && IF EXIST %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\IBM\DD\DownloadDirectorLauncher.exe (echo DD Installed) else (echo DD not installed)) || echo DD not installed- You should see either “DD installed” or “DD not installed”.
Linux
How to uninstall
- Open a new terminal window, paste the following command and hit enter:
xdg-mime uninstall ~/.local/share/applications/ibm-downloaddirector.desktop && rm -rf ~/.local/share/applications/ibm-downloaddirector.desktop ~/.config/download-director/- If no errors are displayed, the operation completed successfully.
How to verify if Download Director is installed
- Open a new terminal window, paste the following command and hit enter:
[[ -f ~/.local/share/applications/ibm-downloaddirector.desktop || -f ~/.config/download-director/DownloadDirectorLauncher.sh ]] && echo "DD installed" || echo "DD not installed"- You should see either “DD installed” or “DD not installed”.
Mac
How to uninstall
- Open the “Terminal” app, paste the following command and hit enter:
rm -rf ~/Applications/DownloadDirectorLauncher.app/- If no errors are displayed, the operation completed successfully.
How to verify if Download Director is installed
- Open the “Terminal” app, paste the following command and hit enter:
[[ -d ~/Applications/DownloadDirectorLauncher.app/ ]] && echo "DD installed" || echo "DD not installed"- You should see either “DD installed” or “DD not installed”.
Why I wrote this up:
I find myself stuck with IBM due to the value of legacy skills vs transitioning to newer skills.
Periodically, IBM makes changes to their webpage, or code download system.
Often, these leave things inconsistent (claims that HTTP can be used, but it’s no longer available).
Worse, forced tools will stop working, and the IBM solution is to wipe your entire browser config and start over.
IBM has decided it’s better to force people to use Download Director instead of any standard protocol.
IBM’s mantra is “It worked for me in the lab, so if it doesn’t work for you, tough patooties.”
There is no escalation to people who make decisions. This has been an ongoing issue for a decade.
No one cares, except a few of the ubertechs supporting things, but they have no sway.
I’ve been using HTTP for a while, but they pulled that, so I had to use DD.
This time, DD gave me an error that JavaWS could not be started.
So I uninstalled all Java, reinstalled the newest, and DD said I had no Java installed.
There were no google hits to help, no IBM pages to help, and IBM search is useless as always.
Of the pages I found, none of them had contact forms, because that costs money.
There is no uninstall tool for Download Director.
There is no Browser Extension, no OS uninstall tool.
Removing the AppData folder does not help.
I went to a clean system, and wrote down all that I could find during a new code download attempt.
There is actually a webpage for this, but it is not indexed anywhere. That’s linked above.
That’s what this post is about.
Note that this is not acceptable in any way, and is one of the many reasons people are leaving IBM for open standards.
It’s not about “The Cloud”. It’s about IBM having so many layers between the decision-makers and the workers that they are out of touch. They have no idea how to be a tech business anymore, and are run by people who are content to gut the reputation of IBM so as to report a short-term improvement in gross profit. Zero interest in the long term.
