🙂 Hi all! I have been using IS for many years now and have never had this issue. I use IS to install a custom software whereby user files get created on the local drive. As we make releases I use the IS program to update some of the application files but never (they are marked) delete user created files. In my recent IS we have included many PDF files that cause the installer to be 427mb created as a .exe that can be downloaded from our support site. Today we had a few users that had files missing or simply had other user files overwritten. It was as if the IS program overwrote files even though they are not marked. I was wondering that if some users instead of downloading the large file then running would have an issue if they simply chose to 'run' the install. Has anyone had this problem? This is the first time our install has been this size so I am assuming this is my issue, but I can't be sure. Our previous installs have been around 110mb with no issues. The OS varies from XP to Win7 32/64 bit. As of today, these issues are on Win7. I have tried many times to duplicate the scenario but can't. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
With either InstallScript or MSI projects, no user files should ever be removed unless something has been added to the project to do so (a custom action in an MSI to delete files or script code in events in InstallScript projects). User files also shouldn't be overwritten if they are not being installed with the updated installation. If these files are included with the update, the default behavior for MSI installations is to not overwrite unversioned, modified files (they are assumed to be user data). If a version was provided for the file in the MSI package (even if the file is unversioned, through the Always Overwrite option), the file will be overwritten. InstallScript project behavior in this case depends on the Overwrite setting on the component the file is installed with.
Downloading a large installation and running it directly (meaning from the temp folder) instead of saving it first also shouldn't have this kind of effect during the install.
Without being able to reproduce this issue, it may be difficult to determine what the cause of this behavior is. If this is an MSI based project, you may try logging the installation on a machine where this behavior can be reproduced, then look at the log to see if anything is obviously removing any files (and also see what files are being updated).
