The forum

I installed the component dotnet40 to see if a game would work with it according to a appdb.winehq.org page and since that game doesn't work I don't need dotnet40. How can I remove dotnet40? I can leave it like it is but I get an annoying message about it before I start every game on my steam prefix.

I would like to know as well.  There is no obvious dotnet uninstall executable.

Otherwise we are forced to create a new virtual drive and download the game all over again just to test without it.

Well, you can go to:

PlayOnLinux -> Configure -> select your virtual drive -> Wine tab -> Wine uninstaller

and uninstall it there, but there are probably still going to be issues. Also, any version after 1.5.18 I think comes with wine-mono by default, and a .NET install will likely break the drive. 

Really, though, if the game doesn't work, delete the virtual drive for that game, it goes away. When it gets installed in to a virtual drive, it is ONLY in that one virtual drive. That is point of them. Self-contained installs, independant of the others. 

Did you install this into a virtual drive with other games in it? If you did, keep in mind next time to create a new virtual drive, especially if you are just testing something. 

There's no way to cleanly remove a component, as what's installed (files and settings) is not tracked.

Much less .NET components, since they're so terribly messy to install.

As DJYoshaBYD said, better install from scratch.

 

Edited by petch

I have found that some games can be migrated to another virtual drive without having to download the entire game again.

This way you can just create a new virtual drive, copy the game files and then try it without dotnet.

Steam is the best example.  If you copy the game folder from /SteamApps/common you can just paste it in the new virtual drive in the same directory after installing Steam again.

So nice!  I've tested many Steam games with this method.  I even backup all of my games too.
Other games in clients like Uplay, Origin, battle.net and Arc I'm not totally sure how to migrate the game.