Detection of "OLDPRODUCTS" through FindRelatedProducts action fails

[SimLoe]

Hello,

a customer of our product reported a behavior that we cannot reproduce in our environment, maybe you have any ideas:

Our installer has 4 features, the user can decide to install only some of them. When an update is installed, we want the setup to preserve the selection and update the existing features, but not add more. This works perfectly fine for us.

However, one customer reached out to us and showed us that this is not working for him. He has an installation of our previous version and installs the most recent one. We created the setup debug logs and see the following:

Code: Select all

MSI (c) (A4:24) [18:19:41:940]: Doing action: AI_PRESERVE_INSTALL_TYPE
Action start 18:19:41: AI_PRESERVE_INSTALL_TYPE.
MSI (c) (A4:D8) [18:19:41:943]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Local\Temp\MSI1B16.tmp, Entrypoint: PreserveInstallType
Action ended 18:19:41: AI_PRESERVE_INSTALL_TYPE. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (A4:24) [18:19:41:996]: Doing action: FindRelatedProducts
Action start 18:19:41: FindRelatedProducts.
Action ended 18:19:41: FindRelatedProducts. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (A4:24) [18:19:41:996]: Doing action: LaunchConditions
Action start 18:19:41: LaunchConditions.
MSI (c) (A4:24) [18:19:41:997]: Transforming table LaunchCondition.

In our environment these lines look like this:

Code: Select all

MSI (c) (38:04) [14:09:33:711]: Doing action: AI_PRESERVE_INSTALL_TYPE
Action start 14:09:33: AI_PRESERVE_INSTALL_TYPE.
MSI (c) (38:6C) [14:09:33:868]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Local\Temp\MSI6FD4.tmp, Entrypoint: PreserveInstallType
Action ended 14:09:33: AI_PRESERVE_INSTALL_TYPE. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (38:04) [14:09:33:899]: Doing action: FindRelatedProducts
Action start 14:09:33: FindRelatedProducts.
MSI (c) (38:04) [14:09:33:914]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding OLDPRODUCTS property. Its value is '{50354F3D-CBBC-4FFB-9669-2BD6A36AC575}'.
MSI (c) (38:04) [14:09:33:914]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding MIGRATE property. Its value is '{50354F3D-CBBC-4FFB-9669-2BD6A36AC575}'.
Action ended 14:09:33: FindRelatedProducts. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (38:04) [14:09:33:914]: Doing action: LaunchConditions
Action start 14:09:33: LaunchConditions.
MSI (c) (38:04) [14:09:33:914]: Transforming table LaunchCondition.

This is the reason why we get only the previously selected features installed and he gets all the features, even though he does not want them.

How does AI check if there is an older version present?
I can also provide you with the full logs.

Best regards,

Simon

[Catalin]

Hello Simon,

This is indeed quite strange.

The FindRelatedProducts is an MSI standard action, proprietary to Windows Installer - it is not proprietary to us.

I do not really see how this action can fail and if it somehow does fail, there really isn't much we can do since it's proprietary to Microsoft.

The only thing I'm thinking is that your customer does not have the previous version installed. Otherwise that standard action should be able to detect it.

Could you please double check with your customer and let me know if that's the case?

Best regards,
Catalin

[SimLoe]

We think, we were able to find the root cause for this behavior: The customer had installed an old version of our product (with all features) on the affected machine before. There were still some files left that were not uninstalled properly. After we deleted those files, the installer worked as expected. Topic solved...

[Catalin]

Hello Simon,

Thank you very much for your followup on this!

I'm sure this will be of help for other users facing a similar scenario - and honestly I noted this myself as I haven't encountered this scenario until now.

Best regards,
Catalin