mctozzy
Posts: 81
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:37 am

Vista restart manager

Thu Aug 28, 2008 12:15 pm

Here is an annoying aspect of the new Restart Manager on Vista. I have a package with a service. The service is in a running state (does not matter how this actually happens) after installation. Now uninstall the package. The installer has control operations in it to stop the service at uninstall time. However, good old Vista makes an assessment before things have got this far, and pops up a dialog to the effect that files are in use, and a reboot is required...proceed Yes or No? If you click Yes, the package successfully un-installs, but a restart is not actually prompted/performed, as one would expect, because it isn't necesssary.

So, how to stop restart manager from prompting with this unnecessary/misleading question? (Short of completely turning off the restart manager if that is even possible)

Thanks,
MT

Cosmin
Posts: 5797
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:39 pm
Contact:  Website

Re: Vista restart manager

Fri Aug 29, 2008 8:02 am

Hi,
good old Vista makes an assessment before things have got this far, and pops up a dialog to the effect that files are in use, and a reboot is required
I am unable to reproduce this behavior on my test machines. Can you please send us a log of the uninstall process to support at advancedinstaller dot com so we can investigate it?
how to stop restart manager from prompting with this unnecessary/misleading question?
I'm not sure if this can be done because it is managed automatically by the Windows OS.

Regards,
Cosmin
Cosmin Pirvu - Advanced Installer Team
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mctozzy
Posts: 81
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:37 am

Re: Vista restart manager

Fri Aug 29, 2008 8:11 am

I'll see what I can do. I found people complaining about the same issue in the Installshield forums...

http://community.macrovision.com/showth ... p?t=177108

mctozzy
Posts: 81
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:37 am

Re: Vista restart manager

Fri Aug 29, 2008 8:37 am

I have emailed you the uninstall log.

mctozzy
Posts: 81
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:37 am

Re: Vista restart manager

Fri Aug 29, 2008 1:21 pm

For anyone else bothered by this, the solution is to add this property to your project:

MSIRESTARTMANAGER=Disable

This causes the Vista restart manager to be disabled when you try to uninstall the package in question. You may still get, in its place, a files-in-use dialog if Vista wants you to shut down other programs that it thinks might be holding shared resources open, however at least that tells you what those programs are and gives you a retry button. Better yet, if other such apps are not running, you won't get the Restart Manager's annoying and apparently spurious popup message referred to in this thread.

Cosmin
Posts: 5797
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:39 pm
Contact:  Website

Re: Vista restart manager

Mon Sep 01, 2008 7:59 am

Hi,

Please note that you can also add this property in the "Install Parameters" page. This way it will be added automatically to the resulted MSI so you don't have to edit the MSI manually.

Basically, Windows Installer detects that some files which need to be modified or removed are currently in use. Therefore, it schedules a reboot in order to modify or removed them after the machine is restarted (the files are no longer in use).

Please note that sometimes Windows Installer makes some mistakes about these files, so its possible that your package gives false positives (no files are in use, but Windows Installer thinks they are). Also, it is possible that your application is related to the conflicting programs (Firefox, Thunderbird and P4win) and removing it affects some files used by these programs.

Regards,
Cosmin
Cosmin Pirvu - Advanced Installer Team
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