Unintentional Uninstalls

[SimonMorris]

I have the 7.0 Express Edition.

I've noticed that if I run an installer a second time, it uninstalls my app. That seems odd to me and I'd prefer that it just ran the actual install a second time.

I've already had one perplexed user on the phone telling me that his 'desktop icon disappeared', only to find that he run the installer twice. I can understand why he was confused as I certainly wasn't expecting the one program to behave in two opposite ways.

Any way of getting around this odd behaviour?

- Simon

[MichaelNesmith]

You do get a confirmation prompt before an uninstall, so your user probably doesn't read his screen very much

Even then, IA scripts are typically set to repair or modify the installed feature set when run again - unless you ran the Project Wizard and turned that option off explicitly.

At any rate, you can change the behavior from the MSIcode view, but you don't get to access that with Express.

[SimonMorris]

Code: Select all

so your user probably doesn't read his screen very much

Sadly, very true.

However, I think that could be said for a large number of users. The temptation is often to think in terms of computer people selling software to computer people, as Installaware does. My market includes a fair number of people who are highly talented in other directions and they won't expect subsequent upgrades to uninstall their software and so won't be watching for it.

I think the default Express behaviour is going to be a problem for me. Can I move up from what I have now?

- Simon

[MichaelNesmith]

Of course, just drop sales an email. You can pay for the difference in the new edition you want to move up to; or just order the new edition upfront and we'll refund your old product.

[SimonMorris]

I'm not sure I explained my situation clearly earlier and think I may have found how to help myself.

This issue I have is that I am sending key users daily upgrades right now while I'm testing a new product. For each new build, I just replace the app's .exe file in IA and rebuild the install. However, each subsequent build's installer is seen as the same installer and so gets uninstalled.

I've spotted the 'Revision Code' in the Project Properties section. If I just generate a new one of these for each new build's installer, will Window Installer see it as a new item and not go through the uninstall loop?

It doesn't look like a new Add/Remove program entry is made either, so that's good.

I'll get an upgrade to Dev or Studio, but for the moment, will this solve my immediate problem?

- Simon

[MichaelNesmith]

If you want to patch old product versions to your latest version, you can do two things:

1) What you're currently doing (InstallAware automatically updates the revision code when you do a new build, unless you disable this feature, which is not recommended). The old product version will be removed and the new version will be installed.

2) Using patches instead. This way, an uninstall does not occur, and setup will patch your old version to the latest version.

[SimonMorris]

Thank you Michael

I think perhaps I need to research the term 'patch'. I've been around for a while and I'm sure that a patch used to be a file that actually modified an executable. In the days of 300 baud modems, you could send someone a few kilobytes to patch a file.

That's not what you mean, is it? Is it?

- Simon

[Edhy]

If you want to patch old product versions to your latest version, you can do two things:

1) What you're currently doing (InstallAware automatically updates the revision code when you do a new build, unless you disable this feature, which is not recommended). The old product version will be removed and the new version will be installed.

2) Using patches instead. This way, an uninstall does not occur, and setup will patch your old version to the latest version.

Hi Michael,

For option # 2, the limitation of not been able to use the patch with a single compress .exe has been removed?