Files not copied

[classic]

Hello:

This is our first attempt at using Installaware. We have been a Wise Installbuilder user for years.

We have a program with about 400 Crystal reports in .rpt format. In the old version of the software (installed by Wise), all of the reports were in Crystal 7.0 format. In the new software (installed by Installaware) all reports have the same name, but are now Crystal 11.0 format.

At amost every installation, some of the new reports are not being copied over the existing ones, although they are included in the script.

We have confirmed that the app is closed during install, but it appears that Installaware is simply not overwriting reports at random.

Any ideas as I have no clue where to start?

Thanks.

Dave

[Gizm0]

Are you sure it's random?Permissions maybe?Read only flag enabled on these files?

[classic]

Thanks Gizm0.

I thought that might be possible, but it has happened at quite a few users. I would say about 60% of everything we have shipped have needed replacement reports. The problem is that it is almost never the same report (very inconsistent)

I could see a few users having a few "read-only" reports, maybe they were playing with permissions or something, however the majority of my customers are not very "tech-savy" so they tend to stay out of the folder.

Our software also uses the app.path folder for temp files etc. so all users need to have full permission to the folder or the software wil not even run, so I would assume it is not a user-permission issue either.

Not sure where to look. We are considering sending two install programs, Installaware to put on Crystal 11 and then Wise to put on our app, but that's a pain!

Any other thoughts?

[MichaelNesmith]

To make sure files are getting overwritten...be sure to call Delete Files Recursive and nuke them before installing your new version!

Otherwise, as long as your files are not versioned, Windows Installer will rely on file dates and times to overwrite/replace files.

This means that, files may not be overwritten/replaced if user's updates are newer than those in your setup package.

And this can explain the "Random" factor.

[classic]

Thanks for the reply.

I looked at "delete recursive" and it might be useful if the reports all had similar names, but they do not. I have about 400 reports and we add new ones every month or so.

Power users are also able to create their own, new reports using Crystal, so there is no way to say Delete *.rpt to get rid of them all without the risk of deleting something the user has created. We do however tell them never to modify an existing report without renaming it first.

So for all 400 reports we have to add a delete line just before the copy line, correct? Also if we add a new file to the install files area, we would also have to add the delete command to the script.

Is there any way for the installer to create the "delete" entry automatically, if I checked off an "always overwrite" option? (wish list?) Any easier way to do this?

I guess because our old Wise script did not use MSI, we never had to deal with this before. Wise always overwrote unless we told it not to. Not a knock, I know full well the joys of trying to work around Microsoft's "I will protect you" schemes. Just can't help but think there might be a simpler way.

Thanks.... Dave

[jape]

Wouldn't it be nice if IA had fakeversioning for overwriting non-versioned files.
I made feature request for that in february but didn't get any response. So I guess IA isn't going to implement that in near future. It just would have made my life a lot easier and I guess yours too.