My patch is showing some weird behavior. The base installer (released) is not set to cache locally due to the files sizes. So, after the base install is done, those temp cache files are deleted. Now comes the patch, and I'm having the following problems. 1. Patch looks for source - this was resolved by setting "Include whole files" to "Yes". 2. We have hotfixes (just zip files) that were released in between the releases. If I apply those hotfixes on top of the base release, then apply the patch, the patch wouldn't update the files. REINSTALLMODE is set to "omus". Since hotfixes are older files(versions), they should be overwritten, right? Well, it's not happening. So, I tried setting REINSTALLMODE to "amus" to force updating all the files, but then the patch looks for the source and gives me one of those "source cannot be found..." errors. Is there a way around this??? PLEASE HELP!!!
Setting REINSTALLMODE to overwrite all files is one cause of prompts for source media in a patch installation:
The patch was applied with a REINSTALLMODE of amus or emus. This option is dangerous in that it performs file copy operations regardless of file version. This can lead to down-reving of files and almost always requires the source. The recommended REINSTALLMODE value is omus.
If the files are not replaced in a patch after they have been hotfixed, the version numbers for the files (if they are versioned) is the most likely cause (the hotfixed file versions are greater than the file versions in the patch). If they are unversioned files, and the hotfixes were not applied by MSI patches, this would cause the modified dates of the files to be newer than the create dates, causing Windows Installer to not replace the files because it believes they are user data.
Thank, joshstechnij. I forgot to mention that my files are not versioned. So, in that case, what do I need to do to replace the hotfix files with patch files?
You may try marking individual files that need to be updated with the Always Overwrite option and use the recommended value for REINSTALLMODE. This still has the potential of causing a prompt for source in repair scenarios for the files marked Always Overwrite, since that will cause Windows Installer to always replace those files.
In general, though, it is best to use versions on executable type files.
Hi joshstechnij, I am facing the same issue with patch. My patch is not able to overwrite user modified data. Also my files are dynamically linked, so there is no "Always Overwrite" property.
