Minor Upgrade not removing files which not require Minor Upgrade version.

[manikandana]

Hi Team,

We are looking for some guidance to resolve the issue, can you please check and provide your input on what we need to do next? 

Let me explain the problem statment.

We are using InstallShield2014 professional, we are releasing our product with some changes or features and we have many versions in our product, as a practice when customers want to upgrade our product we are asking them to uninstall and install the new version of our product.

This is becoming a tedious process for the user to reconfigure and reselect all the components/features also they have re-configure all the settings and other parameters.

 Since we are not changing the product code from the beginning till the recent release, we tried rerunning the setup.exe, its saying upgrade the product as shown in the below image.

Also, it is not asking any input again on whatever we selected in the previous version components and features, which is good we don't want to ask again from the user to select again the same.

It is upgrading our product but the major issue we are seeing here in the previous version setup files and folder are not removed this will create confusion for our support engineer also we are looking same folder structure to be followed how its presence in the fresh installer is the present same way we are looking in the upgrade aspect.

Can you please suggest or guide us, on how we can resolve this issue?

Also, you can refer case 02600241

Thanks,

Manikandan

[manikandana]

Hello Team,

Any update on this issue, can you help with this?

Thanks,

Manikandan

[shunt]

Hi -

When we upgrade a Windows Installer package we have to follow very specific rules outlined by Microsoft so the Windows Installer Engine understands how to behave.

There are essentially 2 types of upgrades:
A Major Upgrade: This will automatically uninstall the previous version and install the new one
A Minor Upgrade: This will just replace the upgraded files.

I created a video explaining Windows Installer Upgrades in more detail here:
https://community.flexera.com/t5/InstallShield-Knowledge-Base/Introduction-to-Windows-Installer-Upgrade-Types/ta-p/193041

The issue with a Minor upgrade is that there are a host of limitations that it won't support - such as the removal of Components, Features, Keys File to name just a few.
A great article explaining what is and isn't supported in the upgrade types can be found here:
https://docs.revenera.com/installshield26helplib/helplibrary/MajorMinorSmall.htm

If I understand your issue - you want the upgrade to automatically uninstall the previous version first - but preserve user configuration/data files.

This is a common issue, and unfortunatley will require some additional work for you.

First you will need to create a Major Upgrade:
https://community.flexera.com/t5/InstallShield-Knowledge-Base/Create-a-Major-Upgrade/ta-p/3879

Secondly, you will need to create custom actions that will preserve the config files. To do this you will need to write your own custom code that will copy the files in question to a secure location on the target machine. This custom action will need to be launched before the "RemoveExistingProducts" action the execute sequence.

Then after the installation completes - create another custom action that will copy the files from the saved location, back into application directory overwriting the files that are there. Finally you will then need to deleted the files that you saved to tidy up.

I hope this helps,
Stuart

[manikandana]

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for your suggestions and guidance, I will check from our side, and let me update to you.

Regards,

Manikandan