I am building the final VMs for our 10174 course, we are trying to minimize the VM sizes and trying to do some interesting things. As part of this process, I'm finding all these interesting things about all the products we threw into the images. One is:
Uninstalling Office Web Apps 2010 will remove your SharePoint server from the Farm! Not sure why it does this, I would have expected it to just remove the service applications and delete files and registry keys while leaving the WFE connected to the Farm, but alias, no. Watch out when doing this, you will take your farm down for a little while until you re-attach the server to the Farm.
Oh, and make sure you have your farm passphrase handy…after rejoining, it *looks like* all service applications are setup correctly so you won't have to re-run the Farm Configuration Wizard.
Unfortuantely the farm is left in an instable state, DO NOT UNINSTALL OFFICE WEB APPS! : Blog here
Chris