Whenever I install a new version of ArcGIS for Desktop, especially new full or dot releases, I try to completely uninstall the previous version. Consequently, today when I realized ArcGIS 10.4 Pre-release for Desktop was available I decided to uninstall 10.3.1 and then install that. I removed the CSW Clients for ArcGIS Desktop first, and that went smoothly.
However, when I tried to uninstall ArcGIS 10.3.1 for Desktop, I encountered the error below which I posted about at Avoiding Error 1325 EsriPyFldr not valid short file name when uninstalling ArcGIS for Desktop? - Geographic Information … .
While waiting for an answer I started to try a few things like:
