Pinned application icons get invalidated on update

[sjstreeting]

I'm having the following issue with applications installed with Advanced Installer that are pinned to the taskbar in Win7+ and then updated:

• Install the application
• Start the application, right-click on its taskbar icon and select 'Pin this program to the taskbar'
• Close the application, update it to a new version (major upgrade, so standard installer)
• Pinned taskbar icon is invalidated, turns into a blank page
• Unpinning and re-pinning the application resolves this, but this is annoying to users

Does anyone know if there's a way to avoid this?

[Daniel]

Hello,

In order to avoid this you can try to use your own custom action (scheduled to run during upgrade) which will pin the application to Taskbar. You can take a look on "Taskbar pinning lost after upgrade" and "Pin the application to task bar" threads which debates similar issues.

All the best,
Daniel

[sjstreeting]

I don't want to always pin the application after installing, I just don't want to break the pinning a user may have already done. Other app installers / updaters manage this, I think this is something you should support out of the box.

[Daniel]

Hello,

I'm afraid we don't have predefined support for this. Maybe this improvement will be available in a future version of Advanced Installer, thank you for your suggestion. Until then, as a workaround, you can try to develop your own custom action in order to achieve this.

Thank you for your understanding.

All the best,
Daniel

[sjstreeting]

Hrm.

Is there a way to tell if an app is already pinned to the task bar before uninstalling on update, and to use that flag to conditionally un-pin that one and re-pin the newly installed version of the app after install?

[Bogdan]

Unfortunately there are no docs we could find on this from Microsoft, we'll have to do some reverse engineering to get more info about how they store information about the pinned applications.
Once we have more information we'll update this post.

I already have this improvement on my list, we'll try to include the support to maintain pinned applications in Advanced Installer ASAP.

Best regards,
Bogdan

[sjstreeting]

Thanks! FWIW Advanced Installer itself has the same problem (not surprising), I have it pinned to my taskbar

[Bogdan]

Hi,

Made some research on this and I have only a partial solution, that comes with its disadvantages.

The main problem is that Microsoft offers no API in Windows to pin a shortcut to the taskbar, and also in its guidelines
says that this should never be done programatically. I know that are installers that can pin a shortcut to the taskbar, but they
are most likely using custom actions with undocumented methods to achieve this.

Now, back to our problem and its solution, which is quite simple. There is a way to design a setup package to maintain a shortcut pinned by the user (manually). For this the package must follow these two rules:

- it must have the option "Install new version and then uninstall old version" from Upgrades page
- the installation path, set from Install Parameters page, must be the same for all versions, i.e. make sure it does not contain "[ProductVersion]" in it, or any other properties that have different values for each new version of your product.

Now you must read carefully the implications of using "Install new version and then uninstall old version" before jumping on this solution,
to make sure your package supports it.

Regards,
Bogdan

[sjstreeting]

Thanks for the update. Reading the docs on "Install new version first and then uninstall old version", am I reading it right that if you remove a file from an existing component, you always have to create a manual removal action?

I'm also not sure how to read how it updates existing components. If files are updated or added to a component that is common to both the old and the new installer, will both be installed?

[Bogdan]

Hi,

if you remove a file from an existing component, you always have to create a manual removal action?

Yes, this is because Windows Installer evaluates if the component, identified by name an GUID, is gone be installed again by the
new version. To optimize the upgrade it keeps the resources from the old version component on the machine, thus the new installer will finish copying
files faster, as the existent files are skipped.

If files are updated or added to a component that is common to both the old and the new installer, will both be installed?

No, if the files from the new component are newer, have a higher version, Windows Installer should replace the old ones. It keeps from the old version, and skips copying the files from the new package, only if the files are unchanged, i.e. the same. The article on File Versioning rules from MSDN has more details.

Regards,
Bogdan

[dhervieux]

Hello,
I know it's an old thread but we are still having this problem. Is there a way to ask Advanced Installer to not replace the shortcut during the update. I've tried the setting to "Install new version and then uninstall old version" with no success.

Regards

[Daniel]

Hi and welcome to our forums,

I am sorry but there is still no improvement available in this regard, nor I can say if we will manage to address this behavior.

Thank you for your understanding.

All the best,
Daniel

[Eternal21]

We've just hit the same issue. I'm assuming there still is not a better workaround?

[Daniel]

Hi,

Yes, I am afraid this is still a current limitation and it is quite unlikely to find out a resolution in the future.

Thank you for your understanding.

All the best,
Daniel

[elou]

It would be nice to have a solution to this issue.
At least it should be possible to update the taskbar to remove the "white-icon" after uninstall the application.

Regards, Éric