Major Upgrade does not fully remove previous version

[RomanGuzi]

Hello,

My installer contains Major Upgrade item.
According to logs it does recognize previous version by UpgradeCode and does uninstall it.
All files from previous version seems to be uninstalled, however Add/Remove entry stays! That leaves me with two Add/Remove entries after Major Upgrade.

Please help.

[Christopher_Pai]

Was the previous product installed both per-user and per-machine?

[RomanGuzi]

No it wasn't. It was installed per machine.

[tommex]

i have exactly the same problem - can anybody help?

[tommex]

i have wasted now about a week finding a solution to this problem (which i did not), which now exists for 5 different installers of our product.
this is really an important issue to us.

i would really appreciate any help on this topic!

[irenejia]

what will happen if you click the entry that was left in Add/remove panel? will another remove process launch? please check project properties for the value of 'Maintenance Experience' if your project is installscript project. if the value is multi-instance, that's why you got so many Add/remove entries. but if it does so, it's impossible for you to get a successful upgrade. Just take a look at the setting to be sure.

[tommex]

irenejia, thank you for your response!

irenejia wrote:
what will happen if you click the entry that was left in Add/remove panel? will another remove process launch?

it does launch an other remove process, but it soon aborts with an error "1628:Failed to complete installation" because there is nothing left of the previous installation...nothing but an add/remove entry i think.

irenejia wrote:

please check project properties for the value of 'Maintenance Experience' if your project is installscript project. sure.

i do not have that entry, because i have an "installscript MSI" project.

i am allready really desperate...:(

[tommex]

i do not know if this has anything to do withmy problem, but looking at the registry under

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\

after installing the first version of my product, i find two entries:
InstallShield_{EBE8E60F-1467-4B99-8BFB-C27E379033D7}
and
{EBE8E60F-1467-4B99-8BFB-C27E379033D7}

at that time, there is one add/remove entry for that product.

after installing the second version of that product (major upgrade with remove complete before installing new) i find 3 entries under the mentioned key (all with the same DisplayName):
InstallShield_{EBE8E60F-1467-4B99-8BFB-C27E379033D7}
and
InstallShield_{A05D21FC-82C5-4D02-84CC-73F08ED079AD}
and
{A05D21FC-82C5-4D02-84CC-73F08ED079AD} -> the new one


can anybody confirm that this is correct after a major upgrade or may this be part of the problem?

greetings,

Thomas

[irenejia]

I think I got it: the GUID in registry entry is the product code rather than upgrade code, so you must assign a new product code for you upgrade project. But in fact, they should be in the same product code.

[tommex]

irenejia wrote:
I think I got it: the GUID in registry entry is the product code rather than upgrade code, so you must assign a new product code for you upgrade project. But in fact, they should be in the same product code.

hi ireneja, thanks again for your attention.

hm...sorry,i do not understand what you want to tell me:o ...

if the product code of my old installer was
{EBE8E60F-1467-4B99-8BFB-C27E379033D7}

and the product code of my new (major upgrade) installer was
{A05D21FC-82C5-4D02-84CC-73F08ED079AD}

this means i already changed the product code (which i did of course)...so what do you think should i do different?


from my opinion i did everything which is necessary to do a major upgrade:

1. for my old installer i had an product code, a package code and a upgrade code and i already specified a major upgrade item with the correct upgrade code (and "***ALL_VERSIONS***")

2. for my new installer i changed the product code, the package code and the versionnumber, but kept the upgrade code of course

3. when i installed the new installer, it detected the major upgrade (which i checked within the logfiles and also checked the detect property variable)

4. it removed everything (files, service) and reinstalled everything

5. the final result is the two entries in add/remove programms (and the registry looking like showed in the previous post...):(

best regards,

Thomas

[irenejia]

oh, sorry! I made mistakes. Yours is a major update. Do you have similar problems in uninstallation? It may not only be the problem of upgrade. when I tried to uninstall my test InstallScript MSI project with command: msiexec.exe /x {ProductGUID}, your case was re-created, because there's another registry entry installshield_{xxxx}, which can not be uninstalled by windows installer engine. But if I uninstalled it by launching the installer again, everything was perfect. Please regard this as a hint and double check your installer. I hope I could help.

[DLee65]

How was the original package in the testing deployed?

I have found that if a package is deployed using Active Directory and then a user with admin rights tries to do a major upgrade then entries are left in Add/Remove Programs.

The entries left behind are specific to the Active Directory Domain. If I just deploy the main app using Setup.exe directly on the local machine then Active Directory should not be an issue.

To date I have not found a solution to the issue with AD other than the IT person will need to defunct the first install and then setup another group policy for the new package. I really don't want to be in the business of cleaning up AD entries from within setup.

[irenejia]

I doubt there's anything relevant to active directory in my test project. To try to reproduce tommex's problem, I created an empty InstallScript MSI project and added a text file to the defaultfeature. Nothing special.

[tommex]

@DLee65: thank you for your advice, but unfortunately this is not the problem:(

@irenejia: i do not have any problems in manual uninstallation. i can uninstall from add/remove programms without any problem. only during a moajor upgrade this key is left behind.

@all: i am getting sick of that. i can not say it for sure, but considering the ammount of installshield bugs i had to work around in the last two years (and especially with the new 2009 version within the last 3 weeks), i guess this is just another bug which will be solved somewhere in the far future:(

since it seems like the complete uninstallation process works well, but only the key remains, i have created an script function which atomatically removes those left-behind-keys. i do not have the time to further waste it on that topic.

thanks to irenejia and DLee65 for the good will anyway, but i think it should be acresso´s job to follow that up:mad:

greetings,

Thomas

[giobb]

tommex wrote:
@DLee65: thank you for your advice, but unfortunately this is not the problem:(

@irenejia: i do not have any problems in manual uninstallation. i can uninstall from add/remove programms without any problem. only during a moajor upgrade this key is left behind.

@all: i am getting sick of that. i can not say it for sure, but considering the ammount of installshield bugs i had to work around in the last two years (and especially with the new 2009 version within the last 3 weeks), i guess this is just another bug which will be solved somewhere in the far future:(

since it seems like the complete uninstallation process works well, but only the key remains, i have created an script function which atomatically removes those left-behind-keys. i do not have the time to further waste it on that topic.

thanks to irenejia and DLee65 for the good will anyway, but i think it should be acresso´s job to follow that up:mad:

greetings,

Thomas

Hi Thomas,
I have the same problem with my installation packages using IS2009. As you know is there any open ticket with Installshield about this issue ?
This is a very important open issue; since previous keys remain I have to create a script function that automatically remove those left entries too. This workaround is not accettable for us since we usually release almost 2 version per year and our product has been commercialized for these latest 10 years .... do I have to check 20 key entries into registry ????
Someone can help ?


since it seems like the complete uninstallation process works well, but only the key remains, i have created an script function which atomatically removes those left-behind-keys. i do not have the time to further waste it on that topic.

[tommex]

hi giobb,

i fully understand and share your headache, but unfortunately i can not help you:(

giobb@ wrote:
Hi Thomas,
As you know is there any open ticket with Installshield about this issue ?

as far as i know there is no open ticket, but i am not sure.
this topic has been on top for quite a while, if they would take care, they would have at least posted someting i think:mad:

giobb@ wrote:

This is a very important open issue; since previous keys remain I have to create a script function that automatically remove those left entries too.

that´s what i did.

giobb@ wrote:

This workaround is not accettable for us since we usually release almost 2 version per year and our product has been commercialized for these latest 10 years .... do I have to check 20 key entries into registry ????
Someone can help ?

well, what should i say? we have about 35 different installers, so i fully understand you:o

one hint: in my opinion you do not have to browse for 20 old product keys.
if you just use MsiEnumRelatedProductsA(UPGRADE_CODE, 0, 0, szProductCode) at the OnFirstUIBefore (it has to be done there), you receive the key of the old installation (during a major upgrade). this is the key that you have to remove somewhere during OnFirstUIAfter.

i have used the same script for all of our products and so far this works.

i know its a shame, but thats the way it is...

greetings,

Thomas

[tommex]

after i encountered an other problem which i finally tracked back to this issue, i found the solution within an other (new) thread:

http://community.acresso.com/showthread.php?t=185545

since i have wasted a lot of time because of this installshield bug i have two questions:
1. why was this update not delivered with the automatic software updates??
(it seems to be available since 01.09.2009 in the thread above!!)

2. why has nobody (from acresso) ever posted a solution to this topic??
(i have spent a lot of days and searched a lot of threads until i occasionaly stumbled over the thread containing the solution)

:mad: