mihirkapadia
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:24 pm

Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Thu Jul 23, 2020 9:20 pm

Hello,

I am currently using the Enterprise edition of your product. I created an installer for our customers with version number 20.0.0.1 which was launched successfully. It has the APPDIR property for the program files of our application. Our application also needs to install the user files to a custom location that the user can choose. So that is a property based folder which works well.

Now, I need to upgrade my application from 20.0.0.1 to 20.0.1.1, but when the previous installer had the option of "do not delete the msi file" unchecked so there is no way to apply a patch. Therefore I went ahead and created a major upgrade because that is the only way forward I guess. Please correct me if I am wrong here.

I am doing this by using the Upgrades feature and new product code and selected the option that says "Uninstall the previous version first, then install the current version". Also, I selected the option to remember the previous install location of the application. This only remembers the APPDIR location and does not remember the property based folder location that was created. Luckily I have the location stored in one of the registry entries so may be there is a way to retrieve it from that registry entry and store it in the path edit field of the custom location. For now I am manually selecting the custom folder location it needs to go to via the browse button.

The upgrade works perfectly well if the drives are from the machines internal HDDs. But the upgrade stalls completely if the install locations are external HDDs. The task manager has to intervene and kill the advanced installer task each time this happens. Now, we have a lot of customers who install the application on an external HDD that they have attached to their computers. So how do I resolve this? Is this a bug in AI or am I missing something here. Please help me out on this. I am attaching both the aip project files for 20.0.0.1 and 20.0.1.1 for your reference. Let me know if you need any extra information from my side. We need to roll out this update for our customers asap but this problem has stalled the roll out which is overdue.

Awaiting your reply at the earliest.

Thanks,
Mihir
Attachments
MasterCook 20_20.0.1.1.aip
(419.15KiB)Downloaded 236 times
MasterCook 20.aip
(422.36KiB)Downloaded 230 times

Eusebiu
Posts: 4931
Joined: Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:04 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Tue Jul 28, 2020 10:14 am

Hi Mihir and welcome to our forums.

Sorry for the delayed reply.

I've tested the scenario you described, but I could not reproduce the problem. Are you sure that the external HDD is still connected to your PC during the upgrade of your product? Can you send me a verbose log of the upgrade, so I can investigate it?

Best regards,
Eusebiu
Eusebiu Aria - Advanced Installer Team
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mihirkapadia
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:24 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Tue Jul 28, 2020 12:06 pm

Hi Eusebiu,

Thank you for your reply. After I run the upgrade installer the installer is stuck at this point: See attachment image. Have to kill the task from the task manager to exit this window. The cancel button does not cancel the installation.

Also, attached is the verbose log file for your reference. Let me know if you need any more details from my side.

Thanks,
Mihir
Attachments
MSI14F9.zip
Log file was too large to attach, therefore zipped it.
(341.44KiB)Downloaded 232 times
Capture1.PNG
Installer Window
Capture1.PNG (402.11KiB)Viewed 8785 times

Eusebiu
Posts: 4931
Joined: Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:04 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Wed Jul 29, 2020 2:33 pm

Hi Mihir,

The installation seems to hang during the preservation of the user files. Since the "Do not overwrite existing files" option is set on the user folder, that folder is backed up at the beginning of the upgrade and restored at the end. However, the backup seems to hang in your scenario.

Is the size of that folder very large? Did it hang for a very long time? Are you sure that you have enough space on the external HDD, so the files can be backed up on it?

Best regards,
Eusebiu
Eusebiu Aria - Advanced Installer Team
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mihirkapadia
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:24 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:33 pm

Hi Eusebiu,

Yes, we need to retain the user folder for our users. That is why the setting is set to "Do not overwrite existing files" We do not want to replace the files that the user has edited after they installed our software for the first time, in our case version 20.0.0.1.

The size of the folder is not very large. Around 250 MB. It hangs indefinitely. Even if we let it run for an hour it refuses to budge, we have to kill it from the task manager. I am also damn sure that the external HDD is having enough space for the backup. The device I try it on has around 11 GB of free space on it.

The issue is that it is hanging up only in the case of external HDDs like USB stick and not internal ones. So something is flawed somewhere. How do I deal with this?

Thanks,
Mihir

Eusebiu
Posts: 4931
Joined: Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:04 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Thu Jul 30, 2020 1:59 pm

Hi Mihir,

Can you send me a link to support at advancedinstaller dot com, so I can download and test your packages on my side in order to investigate the problem?

Best regards,
Eusebiu
Eusebiu Aria - Advanced Installer Team
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mihirkapadia
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:24 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:43 pm

Hi Eusebiu,

I have shared with you the links to the installer builds for ver 20.0.0.1 and 20.0.1.1 on email ID support at advanced installer dot com. Look for 2 invitations from GDrive with my email ID mihir at mastercook dot com.

I further debugged the issue and found out that this happens only when the drive is Formatted as a FAT32 drive. FAT32 has file size restrictions of up to 4 GB. So is it the case that the backup file created by AI is more than 4 GB in size? This is hard to believe.

If I format my external drive to be NTFS, the upgrade works well. Let me know.

Thanks,
Mihir

Eusebiu
Posts: 4931
Joined: Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:04 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Mon Aug 03, 2020 2:31 pm

Hi Mihir,

Thank you for sharing your resources with me and for the information you provided which was very helpful.

I've been able to reproduce the problem which seems to be caused by an Advanced Installer issue when it comes to FAT32 drives. I added this on our list, so it will be investigated and fixed in a future version of Advanced Installer. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

We will update this thread when the fix will be available.

Best regards,
Eusebiu
Eusebiu Aria - Advanced Installer Team
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Catalin
Posts: 6541
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Tue Sep 01, 2020 5:05 pm

Hello Mihir,

This issue has been fixed in Advanced Installer 17.3, released on August 26th, 2020.

Best regards,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
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mihirkapadia
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:24 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Tue Sep 01, 2020 5:13 pm

Thanks a lot !!! I will let you know once I implement this and how it goes. Thanks once again.

-Mihir (for MasterCook)

Catalin
Posts: 6541
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Wed Sep 02, 2020 10:30 am

You are always welcome, Mihir!

Best regards,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
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mihirkapadia
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:24 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:33 am

Hi Catalin,

After testing the installer again at our end it seems that the bug is not fixed. It behaves in the same manner on FAT32 drives as it used to behave before. Upgrade goes through smoothly on NTFS but fails on a FAT32 drive system. I am attaching here both the aip files. The original one that was released to our customers and the new one I created after updating AI to the latest Version 17.4.1 (E10C23B1)

Let me know if you need any further details from my end.

Please help me out with this issue as we are waiting to roll out an update for our users since a very long time. I would appreciate prioritizing and resolving this for us at the earliest.

Thanks,
Mihir
Attachments
MasterCook 20 Update1.aip
New Project File for Update
(419.85KiB)Downloaded 225 times
MasterCook 20.aip
Original Project File
(422.36KiB)Downloaded 216 times

Catalin
Posts: 6541
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Thu Sep 10, 2020 1:07 pm

Hello Mihir,

I am sorry to hear that the fix did not help.

We are currently investigating this.

I will let you the outcome once we are done.

Thank you for your patience.

Best regards,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
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mihirkapadia
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:24 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Tue Sep 15, 2020 7:34 am

Hi Catalin,

Is there any update on this? Please let me know. As I have mentioned earlier that we have been waiting to roll out an update for our users since a very long time and have been stuck on this issue.

Thanks,
Mihir

mihirkapadia
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:24 pm

Re: Upgrade fails if install location is an external USB HDD

Wed Sep 16, 2020 7:41 am

Hi Catalin,

How did your investigation go? Please keep me updated on the status. My email ID is mihir@mastercook.com for communication purposes outside this forum.

Awaiting your reply.

Thanks,
Mihir

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