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hbchai
Level 3

Minor Upgrade Fails with "Error 1316. A network error occurred ..."

Wanted to post my experience in case anyone else is struggling with the same problem.

I experienced an issue today where an upgrade installation failed at the "Registering Product" step, with "Error 1316. A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file ..." . The "Downloaded Installations" subdirectory referred to was not the correct one for the package being uninstalled.

I found that the problem was caused by our changing the "Product Name" property of the installation package. There isn't a specific indication in the IS documentation that changing this value affects the upgrade process, but it does - we had decided to add the version number to this property as a convenience, i.e. so that it showed up under Add/Remove Programs. However, it appears that differing Product Name's will cause the (genius) installer not to be able to locate the previous package. Sad but true (isn't that the story of InstallShield?).

Long story short - choose a version-agnostic Product Name, and stick to it!


Haw-Bin
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DebbieL
Level 17

Changing the ProductName property is not an issue for minor upgrades. I think that you encountered an issue because by default in InstallShield, the name of the .msi package is based off of this property. Thus, if you change the ProductName property without also overriding the .msi package name, the name of the .msi package changes to match the ProductName. However, if you want to use a minor upgrade, you can't change the name of the .msi package. (Changing the name of the .msi package is one of the reasons why you would need to use a major upgrade instead of a minor upgrade. For more details, see Major Upgrade vs. Minor Upgrade vs. Small Update.)

So, it is OK to change the name of the ProductName property between releases. If you want to deliver minor upgrades, you need to make sure that you keep the name of the .msi package consistent. You can override the default .msi package name by using the MSI Package File Name setting that is displayed when you select a product configuration in the Releases view.

I hope that helps.
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hbchai
Level 3

Thanks for the helpful information DebbieL. I was not aware that the MSI file name could be overridden. In our case, starting with a fresh product code makes more sense than overriding the file name to contain an outdated version string. I got the version string to appear in Add/Remove Programs with the UNINSTALL_DISPLAYNAME property anyway.

Haw-Bin
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