We install an application (MSI) using MSIEXEC with the following command line option:
MsiExec.exe /x{code} /qn /liwearucmopvx+ C:\Log\UnInstall.tra
MsiExec.exe /iC:\Source\App.msi /qn TARGETDIR=C:\Install ALLUSERS=1 /liwearucmopvx+ %C:\Log\Install.tra
Most of the time this works, but sometimes the uninstall fails (not sure why yet, looking into the error). Anyways when this happens I get the following error during the re-install:
Another version of this product is already installed. Installation of this version cannot continue. To configure or remove the existing version of this product, use Add/Remove Programs on the Control Panel
Is there a way to bypass this? Meaning to ensure that we always re-install (if it exists we can simply automatically blow it away?)
Check out the MSDN Documentation on the Upgrade Table, basically you need to set the msidbUpgradeAttributesVersionMaxInclusive bit.
You don't state what you're using to build your installer, if you're using WiX 3.5 or later you can use MajorUpgrade/#AllowSameVersionUpgrades="yes" to take care of this for you.
Note that because MSI ignores the
fourth product version field, setting
this attribute to yes also allows
downgrades when the first three
product version fields are identical.
For example, product version 1.0.0.1
will "upgrade" 1.0.0.2998 because
they're seen as the same version
(1.0.0). That could reintroduce
serious bugs so the safest choice is
to change the first three version
fields and omit this attribute to get
the default of no.
Note that instead of having to remember the package code (a real pain if you're using auto-generated package codes with Continuous Integration) the following VBScript will remove the package by name by searching the list of installed products and finding the package code itself.
Option Explicit
Dim productName, productCode, installer
productName = "My Application"
Set installer = Wscript.CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
For Each productCode In installer.Products
If InStr(1, LCase(installer.ProductInfo(productCode, "ProductName")), LCase(productName)) Then Exit For
Next
If Not IsEmpty(productCode) Then
Dim WshShell, oExec
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set oExec = WshShell.Exec("msiexec /x " & productCode & " /qb /l*v ""%temp%\UninstallApp.log"" ")
End If
The question is quite older, but the existing answers are missing the essence of problem and solution while useful for other scenarios:
If the uninstall fails, you have a serious problem, and there is no better way than analyzing this- otherwise you could get in more trouble later.
At least, I would write a small script/program, which uses the return value of the uninstall or, even more powerful, tests, if the MSI is still installed- BEFORE you try to install the new MSI.
I would give more information how to do this, if there is interest in this, but there is already information on SO in other questions.
Some other answers recommand, that you should use Major Upgrades (every new build can/should be a correct Major Upgrade in this scenario, at least as a recommendation). This is a good recommendation, but does not help, if uninstalls are failing "sometimes".
Moreover it is important to state, that most often, the error you mention, shows that you are not using Major Upgrades already.
If you have really a problem with uninstalls, then a Major Upgrade could increase problems, because dependent on the configuration, it can install the product a second-time MSI-wise and you have two MSI references on this, what is still one product for you. More details would lead too far. Just remember, an (always) working uninstall or at least a test for this has to be assured before further update steps.
The script from saschabeaumont is really short and nice. What it is doing, is to assure, that you are really using the correct ProductCode. The main need is, because it has to change every time, you produce a Major Upgrade...
In your case: This solves only ONE scenario, why your uninstall could have failed...
If the uninstallation fails the product will still be registered on the system - depending on where the failure occurs the uninstallation will rollback, leaving the product still installed.
If you attempt to reinstall a product with the same product code but different version on top of an existing installation MSI will complain, rightly, that the product is still installed. If you want to achieve upgrade behaviour then you need to change the product code and write entries into the upgrade table so that MSI can discriminate between the old and new products and use the RemoveExistingProducts action to remove the old product before or after the newer version is laid down.
If you want to understand why the uninstallation failed, you need to look at the logs, typically look for 'return value 3' which is the signature of a failed installation action.
Related
I am attempting to make sure certain software does not exist before installing the newer version. Long story short, vendor requires me to do so, and although they recommend me to repair after install, that causes other issues such as undesirable restart (trust me I tried /norestart and I have even tried to modify the stored msi package to make sure it does not restart) but over all it just gives us soo much headache without the result we want.
So I tried to simply uninstall this software ahead of installing their newer one since that seem to have higher success rate without unnecessary issues.
Now I am accomplishing this by running batch file via ExePackage (with WiX toolset) with Vital="no". I have to do Vital="no" because when the older installer does not exist and if I call msiexec /x, it returns the error stating
this action is only valid for products that are currently installed
When the older installation exists, it works fine, but when it does not it errors out.
Now Vital="no" works fine, but I would prefer to suppress the error with msiexec /x if I can.
Is there any known way to solve this?
In order to solve this problem, I checked the uninstall keys and only called msiexec /x on products that were listed. Though in my own case, we were switching installer tech (too many MSI bugs...) and were uninstalling older versions of our own.
Installation State: You can use VBScript to check for the installation state of a product if you know its product GUID (replace the sample GUID here):
Dim installer : Set installer = CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
MsgBox installer.ProductState("{6C961B30-A670-8A05-3BFE-3947E84DD4E4}")
There are a number of possible installation states. Here is a more comprehensive script to check product installation state. Check section 7 here.
Major Upgrades: I assume you are aware of how major upgrades work? (uninstall of existing installation and install of newer version with options for what order this happens in). They can in reality uninstall any other MSI package on installation via settings in its Upgrade table. This includes even competitive products (a bit mad one would have to say). You can - however - not install them again easily from within MSI for a number of technical issues. You could install them via a Burn setup.exe bootstrapper (which I think you use).
I am using WiX to install a executable and I have used ManagedBootstrapperApplicationHost for CustomUI.
Is it possible to get the name of the feature being installed at the time of installation ?
If possible then how can we get the name of the feature ?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Features aren't installed one after another. For example if 3 features are being installed, each with 10 files then the InstallFiles action will install all 30 files at the same time. Same thing with registry entries. So you can't display a UI that says "Installing Feature1" and then later on "Installing Feature2" because that doesn't happen. All you can know is that some list of features are being installed.
Your comment asks about finding out whether a feature installed successfully or not. This issue never comes up - there are never some features that install and others that fail. An MSI install is a transaction and it either all works or fails and rolls back and deletes changes it made so that the system is restored to its previous state.
It's not clear why the list of features is so important to display. If you use the MSI's internal UI there is a feature selection dialog where the user selects which features are to be installed; if you use the Burn UI the same thing is available, so the user can see what features have been chosen.
Inside the MSI the list of features being installed (after they've been selected) is in the ADDLOCAL property, but that's the internal name. It could be used to display a list of the features that were installed at the end, but again by definition what was chosen is installed otherwise the install would have rolled back entirely. I don't believe I've ever seen an install where the list of MSI features installed is displayed at the end - it's redundant info. It would be useful to know the scenario you have, or what problem you're trying to solve, and if you believe that you need to display a list because some might install and others might fail then there is no point, as I have said.
We have a product that uses WIX installer and only our support team performs installation routines.
The ONLY way that is used for upgrade application contains two steps:
Delete ANY previous version of application that is installed. We have a list of all product GUIDs by which we can delete all possible versions (msiexec /x GUID)
Install the latest one
Upgrade, repair or installation over old version scenarios will never be used for this product (this is impossible because deployment is performed by scripts).
Is it necessary to make product id unique for all new versions in case we do not use Upgrade functionality, or it is possible to keep the same product and upgrade ID?
From the documentation of the ProductCode property: This ID must vary for different versions and languages. So typically you should just set Id="*" in the Product element, so that it is unique for each installer package that you generate.
I can't think of a reason why you would want this Id to stay the same for different versions of your installer; this will confuse windows installer, e.g. you might get the repair dialog when you try to install a newer package without uninstalling the previous one.
The upgrade code should only be relevant when you use MajorUpgrade, but it sounds like you aren't using that.
edit: OK, so you want to keep the product id the same to make it easier to uninstall with msiexec /x {GUID}.
An alternative is to let the installer itself record the product code GUID somewhere. E.g. by creating an uninstall shortcut. Or you could write the product Guid to a fixed location in the registry, and then you can write a script that reads that value to uninstall.
Your two step process is exactly what a Major Upgrade does. However, you say that you don't support upgrades. This doesn't make sense to me.
A properly authored installer could be executed silently via script to automatically upgrade any previous version of your software to the current version.
I suggest you to keep the same product ID. Changing the product ID of the same product is not a good practice. Keep the same product ID. Before you install, uninstall using the script "msiexec /x GUID" as you do now and then install your setup again. As I know a product should have a unique ID all the time.
I have an Installer created with WIX that installs a bunch of DLL and Config files. Once the installation is complete, obviously there are times when I would like to update JUST the DLL files and leave the configs as they were.
I've looked at the NeverOverwrite="yes" option and that looks promising, however I am now running into this issue. When I try and re-run my installer after an installation is complete, I get this error.
The problem is that I do not want to mess with Build Numbers or Product Ids. I just want the installer to re-run and overrwite the necessary DLL files. Does this make sense?
If you recompile to update the dlls you should really think about updating the versioning in your installer. If you have a build process that updates the build number every time you compile your dlls and your installer this shouldn't be a problem.
The reason you are getting the error is because the Product Id and version numbers match, but the package codes differ. To resolve the error you have the following options:
Update the version number and treat it like an upgrade.
Change the product id (and version) and treat it like an upgrade.
The product id and version can match if you set the package code, however this is not really recommended, especially if you are modifying the files in the installer. If you do set the package code to match the previous installer, you will get the maintenance dialog and if you do a repair or modify, I'm not sure if it will use the cached MSI or the recompiled MSI when performing the repair, so I'm not sure what results you can expect.
Like BryanJ says, the error indicates that you are installing a new package which has the same product code as a previously installed package.
The solution is most likely to just set the product Id attribute to *. You only need stable product ids when you want the ability to do minor upgrades.
A minor upgrade does not allow any reorganization of the feature-component tree, and AFAIK only has the advantage of being quicker for huge installations. We just do all upgrades as major upgrades, which are easier to manage.
We have an installer solution written in Visual Studio 2005 Installer; that calls a C# custom action and we have hit a known issue, regarding the fact that on an upgrade - the old install code is run and not the new code, because Windows is running a cached version of the custom action dll. We know this and although not over the moon about it - we have moved on.
When we release a new version of the installer and a user runs it, we now want it to check to see if an ealier version is installed - if there is one; we want to display a message telling them that they have to remove the old version via Add/Remove Programs. We know if they do a manual uninstall followed by an install, then all is fine and dandy - BUT it doesn't matter how many times we tell our users, via documentation; that this is what they have to do - they will still try and just run the new installer, without removing the old version first.
Therefore, we would like to put up a message and thus force them to to what they are told !! I've seen some installers do this ( though of course not sure what installer package was used to create these ). We only have VS 2005 and of course orca !!
Cheers,
Chris.
This can be done through a custom launch condition:
create a search which determines if the old version is installed (you can search for a component, registry entry or file)
use the search property as a custom launch condition
For example, if the search property is OLD_VERSION, the launch condition can look like this:
Condition: NOT OLD_VERSION
Description: An older version was found. Please uninstall it using "Programs and Features" in Control Panel.
When OLD_VERSION property is set to a value (an older version is found), this launch condition will show the message and stop the install process.
This doesn't quite make sense. Have you remembered to change the package GUID in your new setup? The package GUID identifies a specific setup file, and if two MSI files have identical GUID they will be treated as the same file regardless of whether they are or not. This could trigger a cached version of the MSI to be invoked and all sorts of hell breaks loose.
I would recommend reading up on "major upgrades" which will allow automatic uninstall of the existing version before the new version is installed. You also need to make sure you understand the basics of the technology before deploying to the wild. You must NEVER use identical package GUIDs for any MSI files. It's practically always wrong, and will lead to very mysterious problems.
I can't write up the whole major upgrade solution here, but basically it involves authoring the "Upgrade" table of your MSI to detect versions to uninstall. You need to change the package code, product code and version number (only 3 digits matter) and keep the same upgrade code (two MSI files with the same upgrade code "know" they are related - i.e they are from the same product family). Check MSDN for samples of major upgrades.
NB! If you have deployed MSI files with duplicate package GUIDs to your developer machine, it could have stray installs that must be cleaned up with MSIZap or similar. Use caution, or better yet test your new installer on a clean test system. Developer systems are full of junk and not generally good for MSI testing.