qm09
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2009 3:21 am

Seamless Upgrade

Tue Apr 28, 2009 6:20 pm

Hi,

We've recently purchased Advanced Installer Professional. Most of the things we needed work great, however we run into the following problem.

We'd like to make our software upgrade as seamless as possible:
1) Same build should be able being installed again.
2) Different builds one on to of another.
3) Different versions one on top of another.

If this requires uninstall, we'd like it being transparent for the users.

The only thing which should be forbidden in an older version on top of the newer one (exactly as it works today).

I played with various settings in the Upgrade section and tried "Automatically upgrade..." and "Allow side by side..." options, as well as custom upgrade definitions, but still wasn't able to overcome the following problems:

1) Sometimes when I rebuild the installation (self extract exe) with the same version, I get an error: "Another version of this product is already installed..." It offers a manual uninstall which is not good for us.

2) Other times, the installation seems fine, but our dlls are not being overriden (I can see this by their modification time).

Your help will be appreciated.

Thanks

cyb
Posts: 43
Joined: Wed Apr 15, 2009 1:06 pm

Re: Seamless Upgrade

Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:35 am

Hi,
qm09 wrote: 1) Same build should be able being installed again.
When you launch a package which is already installed it will enter in maintenance mode. Windows Installer permits only one instance of the ProductCode. In order to install the same build multiple times you can use the The Multiple Instances feature from Advanced Installer.
You can read the Multiple Instances article for more help.
qm09 wrote:2) Different builds one on to of another.
3) Different versions one on top of another.
For this you can use the automated upgrade feature.
qm09 wrote:1) Sometimes when I rebuild the installation (self extract exe) with the same version, I get an error: "Another version of this product is already installed..." It offers a manual uninstall which is not good for us.
Usually this message is shown if you created a package, installed it, modified its contents and then you tried to install it again without uninstalling the original one. Basically, Windows Installer can upgrade the original package only if the modified one has a higher version and a different Product Code.

If you don't want to create a new version of the package you need to uninstall the original MSI before installing the modified one. However, if you want to create a new version which will upgrade the old one, you can follow the steps explained in the Upgrades article.
qm09 wrote:2) Other times, the installation seems fine, but our dlls are not being overriden (I can see this by their modification time).
There can be several reason for that, which you can read about here . As a solution you can use the "Ensure that this file overwrites any installed target file" option from the "Edit File" dialog. You can read more about this on this File Version article.
Let us know if these solutions worked.

Best regards,
cyb
Cosmin Budrica
Advanced Installer Team
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/

qm09
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2009 3:21 am

Re: Seamless Upgrade

Sun May 03, 2009 5:26 pm

Thanks for your detailed reply. Changing the minor version of the product is OK in our case and the file override works.

But unfortunately there is no "Multiple Instances" tab in the "Media" page in and I didn't find how to activate it (?) in the "Bootstrapper" tab.

The system is Win XP SP2, Advanced Installer Professional 6.9.1.

Thank you

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

Re: Seamless Upgrade

Mon May 04, 2009 2:01 pm

Hi,

The multiple instances feature is available only in Enterprise projects. You can change the type of your project by using the Project -> Options menu. If you want to upgrade your license to Enterprise, you can use this page.

Regards,
Cosmin
Cosmin Pirvu - Advanced Installer Team
Follow us: Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

Return to “Common Problems”