.Net installation progress bar

[MichaelNesmith]

Yes.

[MarkRichards]

Excellent, thanks.

Is there a really comprehensive change list available for v6 somewhere? I didn't think this particular change was mentioned in the press release, but it's actually quite important to me and will likely prompt me to upgrade.

Or maybe I just overlooked it; that's possible too.

[MichaelNesmith]

In the main IDE menu, just choose Help | What's New. This provides a very detailed change-log for all versions of InstallAware starting with 3.0.

[Rene]

Hi Rene!

Some good news which I think will make you happy.
The team has found a way to capture native installation progress from .NET and JSharp installation packages. These will be available in an upcoming update.
Just wanted to share the good news!

I am currently evaluating IA 6 and was excited to hear about this great new feature, unfortunately, after doing some testing I was unable to make this feature work. The progress bar never changed, it remained blank.

I tested this using a fresh installation of Windows XP service pack 2.

My question is, do I have to do something special to enable this feature?

Thank you.

[Rene]

Could someone please *answer* my previous post? This feature is not working.

The “what’s new” documentation says: “The .NET Framework and JSharp Runtime plug-ins now display native progress feedback during installation, improving user experience during these potentially lengthy operations.”

What does this means? Doest this means that only the text status is updated? Or is the progress bar also supposed to be updated?

What’s the problem? I created a brand new install using the latest version of the product (version 6.4) and the progress bar keeps staying blank.

What’s going on??????

[Gizm0]

Works fine for me..

[Rene]

Gizm0

Would you mind emailing me the setup you created to see if it works on the computer that I am using for testing?

If that is not possible, would you mind creating a quick new setup (where you know this feature is working) so that I can run it on my test computer and verify that it works on my environment (fresh installation of Windows XP service pack 2)?

If it does not work on my test computer, then it means that there are some people installing your software getting progress feedback while others are NOT.

[MichaelNesmith]

6.4 broke progress feedback from all plug-ins. Just install 6.41 which was available a day later.

[Rene]

Wow, this is really, really, really sweeeeeeeeeeeet!!! It sure beats the heck out of the old way. This feature alone is definitely worth the upgrade!

There are however, some minor issues regarding the .Net prerequisite installation that I would like to point out.

1. The last pass on the progress bar (during the .Net 2 instillation) has a little hiccup, when the progress bar is about 30% done it jumps back to about 20% and then goes on. This is not at all a show stopper but just something to note.

2. Another really cool option that would complete the .Net progress feedback feature would be to be able to include the percent completion as text (40%, 75% 80%). Similar like the progress bar form the following screenshot: http://vb-progress-bar-activex-ocx.smar ... nshot.html.

The reason why this would be a very nice feature is because when you run into .Net installs that take around 10~30 minutes, if the user wants to find out if the progress bar is moving, the user can *easily* read and remember the numeric % value and compare it against a later value to find out if the install is progressing or not, the same can’t be said about trying to keep track of the last progress bar position and trying to figure out if it really moving or not. Not trying to be picky, I just trying to seal the deal here.

3. Finally, I would like to point out that the “progressprereq” form has a Cancel button on it that is enabled by default. The reality is that if the user clicks on the Cancel button the installation will continue no matter what (at least for the .Net 2) giving the user the false believe that the install was canceled but it really was not.

I don’t know about other pre-requisites, but if the rest of them are the same as the .Net 2 framework, this button should probably be disabled right on the templates (dialog themes), because it wont work anyway.

Further more, clicking Cancel will not terminate the installation process, the installer ignores that the Cancel button was clicked and continues with the rest of the install, I am not talking about prerequisites, I am talking about the regular install after the prerequisites.

Thanks for all the good work!

[MichaelNesmith]

The Cancel button isn't really decorative It does cancel - otherwise, its a bug and let us know.

[MarkRichards]

What I'm seeing is that if I cancel the .NET Framework (2.0) pre-requisite installation process, the framework installation is canceled - but the application installation continues merrily along.

I would expect the entire installation to terminate if any pre-requisite installations are canceled.

I'm just using the standard "setupnet20" script included with IA; is there something special I need to do abort the install if pre-reqs are canceled?

[Rene]

Mark,

Are you sure that the .Net framework installation is being cancelled? In my experiment, the .Net framework will continue to be installed even if I click the cancel button during the install process. I still see it appear on the “Add Remove Software” utility.

Your other issue is exactly what I was mentioning on my previous post, clicking cancel on prerequisites, will not abort the regular application installation.

[MarkRichards]

Hi Rene,

You're absolutely right, it didn't cancel at all. It must have simply been near the end of the .NET Framework installation when I clicked the cancel button. I late found that it had been fully installed.

It seems the cancel button is indeed broken.

[MichaelNesmith]

Rene,

I built a vanilla setup with .NET2, clicked Cancel in the file copy stage, and:

1) Setup was cancelled,
2) Setup quit with "user cancelled installation" error.

Validate your claims before posting here to avoid misunderstandings.

[Rene]

Michael

I am not sure what you mean by “file copy stage”, all I can tell you is that what I said in my previous posts will happen during the “.Net installation stage”.

I didn’t try canceling while downloading the web media block nor did I try canceling during other stages, I only try canceling while the .Net was in the process of installing.

I am not in front of my computer at this time but if you still have problems reproducing this behavior I can email you a video screen capture of the process so you can see for yourself.

By the way, since during my experiments the webmedia block was already cached on the computer, I totally forgot about the download stage but now that you refresh my memory….. I guess that the Cancel button would come in handy to be able to cancel during those other stages so I am going to have to enable that button again!! However, if the actual ".Net installation stage" is un-cancelable then the Cancel button should be disabled on that stage.

Also, I may be wrong, but I think I remember the Microsoft .Net installation utility does disable the cancel button once the actual installation begins, I may be wrong but I think I remember seeing this behavior.

I am experimenting this time using MSI 3.0 and a fresh install of Win XP without any service packs.

Thanks.