Unable to uninstall my product after update

[PetriSuominen]

Hi,

Scenario:

I have an older product published in 2013, so there is a user base on that already. This product uses Crystal Report Runtime libraries.

I am now in the process of publishing a new version of that product. My new installer also uses Crystal Reports and upgrades the old one to a newer version. The new installer also moves all configuration settings from old versio to the new version.

Now the problem is, that if the user wants to uninstall the old version after the new one has been installed, the uninstall will not work because it will try to uninstall the Crystal Reports as well that is no longer there. If a user wants to uninstall the old product before installing the new product it works just fine. But then my installer would not be able to move the configuration settings as they will be gone.

Is there a way to force the uninstall of the old version and simply skip the Crystal Reports part ?

br,

Petri

[FrancescoT]

Dear Petri,

unfortunately there isn't so much to do in your case.

The main problem is that you have altered the default script logic. InstallAware never includes Application RTMs with the uninstallation logic and this due several reasons. The first is that you may have a problem as you are reporting and and secondly, the RTM may be used by other applications which might have installed successively to your package installation.

So, it's absolutely not recommended to uninstall a third party runtime when uninstalling your package.

That said, the only options you have to solve your problem are;

- to deploy an updated version of your OLD installer which DOESN'T REMOVE Crystal Reports RTM during un-install. This should be used to replace every single installation of your OLD version installer, of course.

- from your new installer, forcibly uninstall the old version before to install the new one.

Hope this helps you.

Regards

[PetriSuominen]

Hi,

Maybe I was a bit vague in my explanation.

The old installer does not want to uninstall Crystal Reports. I just verified that by installing the product and then uninstalling it on a clean machine. My program was gone, but Crystal Reports remained as well as SQL server that I installed.

The problem happens, if my new installer installs a newer Crystal Reports. Then for some reason the old instaler cannot uninstall my old product because Crystal Reports has changed (=upgraded).

So for some reason the uninstall wants to "touch" the Crystal Reports installation, and fails because it cannot.

The option to have users first uninstall the old product is not favourable, as I want the new installer to pick up some settings from the old setup that would be lost if it was first uninstalled.

[FrancescoT]

Dear Petri,

can you tell me the respective Crystal Reports versions you used?

Alternatively, do you have any chance to send me two very minimal projects that replicate the issue?

Regards

[PetriSuominen]

Hi,

You can replicate problem by doing the following:

1. Install my old product from https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/kaso ... 6_435A.exe
2. Create a new install project from scratch that installs Crystal Reports latest runtime as a prequisite. Only tweak needed is the UPGRADE=1 parameter to the Crystal Reports Installer as it would else fail.
3. Install the project you did in step two
4. Try to uninstall the old product you installed in step 1.

The old product is using the standard InstallAware script used to install Crystal Reports at the time (2012).

[FrancescoT]

I'll check this and I'll let you know.

Regards

[FrancescoT]

Dear Petri,

you cannot use the "UPGRADE=1" parameter with the the Crystal Reports Installer. Both version are identical (v.13.0.0.99).

In fact with creating a new project from scratch and without modifying the default script code, at setup Runtime the Crystal Reports Installation gets skipped ... as expected.

Hope this helps you.

Regards

[PetriSuominen]

HI,

I needed to do the UPGRADE=1 because instead of the one that the old product installs, I need to install a newer one (13.0.17.2096) from SAP site as the RTM version (13.0.0.99) is not Windows 10 compatible.

Sorry about the left out detail on that bit.

I used the InstallAware functions to create the detection and installation script based on the MSI at the SAP site. The only thing changed was the UPGRADE=1.

br,

Petri

[FrancescoT]

Dear Petri,

what you are reporting has nothing to do with InstallAware. You should contact Crystal Reports support directly.

Hope this helps you.

Regards