I’m creating a setup project (Windows installer) in vs2010. When the user install it for the 1st time – everything is working just fine, but when the user try to upgrade the old application that’s running prevent of coping the new dlls to the installed folder.
How to show a user a dialog box that force him to shut down an application that prevent the installer from override a dll?
You need to check if a process with the name of your executable is running.
Then you can either abort the installation, ask the user to shut down the process or shut it down for them.
If you go for the second option you'll need to double check that they actually have shut it down before proceeding.
Related
I have a vb6 application that runs fine when double clicking the .exe. When I right click the .exe and select 'run as administrator' (on a Windows 7 machine), I get an error: "Run-time error 429. ActiveX component cant create object"
What dll/com is missing?
This seems pretty clear.
One or more DLLs and OCXs you are using was not properly installed and registered. Most likely some of them have been virtualized, either in the filesystem and/or the registry. They can only be seen by that one user when running under its standard-user context because the admin context doesn't have virtualization applied. Log on as a second user and you'll see the same failure.
Installation needs to run under TrustedInstaller, or at least elevated. That's the only way libraries can be placed and registered globally as they need to be.
Have the same problem and in my case I solved in this way:
reference global system DLLs only from C:\Windows\SysWOW64 (ex. msxml6.dll)
run VB6 IDE as Administrator and compile your program
I am currently trying to install my vb6 app on a Windows 8.1 computer via TeamViewer (it's kind of like remote desktop). However, the installation always hangs up after all the files are copied and this message is displayed:
Setup is updating your system
We've tried it on our own Win8.1Pro desktop (via Remote Desktop this time) and Win2008Server(both via Remote Desktop), and it installed just fine.
Right now, we've narrowed it down to one culprit - MyProjectInfo.exe the actual ActiveX .exe. Whether it is me trying to run the .exe for the first time to register it to DCOMCNFG or whether it is the setup.exe running the script $(EXESelfRegister) it just freezes up.
What differences should i look for between 1) our win8.1Pro and win2008server and 2) their win8.1? If it some coding/reference/dependency issue, what could be the cause for why it doesn't error in our desktops?
Thank you for all the help.
Uhmm... this is getting embarrassing.
Avast (present in the other person's Win8.1) was blocking MyProjectInfo.exe from running (which is basically what is does with $(EXESelfRegister).
To properly proceed with registering my ActiveEXE program, I had to turn Avast off for a while. And that was that.
This problem may also occur with other anti-virus scanners as well.
I have an application that was installed as MSI package, I have next version of application that I plan to install in silent mode by special program.
When application is running I catch an issue: not all components of application installed
immediately, some of them will be really ready only after reboot. And I get unstable application.
I can check - is application running and wait until it closed, but I can't check the situation when user click on shortcut during silent installation.
How I can avoid this? Can I lock application during installation?
I suggest implementing Restart Manager support. Vista or later will attempt to shut down your application via the Restart Manager, you can decide how to handle it within your application (prompt user, autosave, something else, etc).
You won't catch the situation where the user starts the application during update, but it will handle multi-user sessions more gracefully than your custom code will.
When I launch an application, a windows installer from a previously installed program keeps popping up. The program still exeists in the Server and it's working fine. The installer popup, after clicking "cancel" will eventually dissapear.
I'm not interested in solving this problem, I'm just wondering how does the windows installer decides what to install? I mean to say, what's the mechanism? How and who triggers the windows installer?
Thanks for any reply!
This is the self-repair mechanism triggered automatically by the OS. Along with the above enumerated reasons it can also be triggered if:
A feature having been installed as advertised/install on first use/install when required
Files inappropriately shared between components, features, or products, which can lead to the resource being uninstalled while a product is still using it
A product with per-user data having been installed on a multi-user system by one user and then launched by another user
To investigate the resource whose absence triggers self-repair, look in the Application section of the system's event log. Self-repair events are displayed with source "MsiInstaller".
If the installer is indeed trying to add a resource required by another application the best solution would be to let it finish, and it should no longer appear after that.
Usually this behaviour appears when one of the following is true:
the install process was not completed successfuly
the registry entries for this program were deleted / corrupted
(not finding an appropriate registry entry is a trigger)
the install program's updatemanager was corrupted / disconfigured / cancelled on the previous run
The solution usually is to completely uninstall the program, to check that all folders and registry entries were indeed removed and then to re-install the program.
We have an MSI installer (created using Wix) which is setup to be able to perform upgrades. Our clients are using it to upgrade our application on multiple machines at once using an SMS package running msiexec in silent mode.
The problem with this is that some of their users will still be running our application at the time the installer is run. We don't want to kick these users off, and running the install while they are using the app invariably breaks things.
Our ideal solution would be for the install to be scheduled to happen the next time the machine boots up.
This is a fairly hefty list of requirements, but does anyone know how I could achieve this or where I might look next?
You could add a value to the registry under HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\RunOnce and it will run the next time a user logs on.
Windows Installer automatically detects files in use. Also, during a silent installation it handles them automatically:
files which are not in use are overwritten
files in use are scheduled for update after a reboot
As you can see, this is somewhat problematic because some files are updated and some file are not.
A good solution is to set REBOOTPROMPT property to "S". This way the target machine is automatically rebooted after install.
Unfortunately MSI packages cannot detect running processes, stop the install and schedule it at the next reboot. This could be done only with a custom EXE bootstrapper.