10 replies to this topic

[pjaiswal]

Hi,

We are working on creating a major upgrade for one of our Product - 'A'. We have other 4 products (B,C,D & E) that are dependent on A. As in, B, C,D & E will not install without A being installed.

Now,after creating a major upgrade for A, when machine has only solution A installed, this major upgrade works fine. But if a machine has any other solution, installed on it along with A, then installing a major upgrade has issues.

With the install of this Product A & the other solutions we add values to the registry. For example:

On installIng A we will have:

HKLM---> X ---> InstalledSolutions

A

And on installing other solutions we will have:

HKLM---> X ---> InstalledSolutions

A
B
C

where A,B,C are our solutions.

After the major upgrade, it looks like the whole key is getting replaced when A is installed, which wipes out the registry values for other solutions. But I am not sure why this would happen?

Thanks.

[pjaiswal]

Also, to add to the above scenario the Registry entry

HKLM-->X

is set by a merge module that is shared by all the solutions - A,B,C,D,E.

Is there anything that we need to take care of for merge modules during a major upgrade?

We had also created a major upgrade for our solution 'B' thats dependent on A in the past and did not have this issue. B also shared this merge module mentioned above. The "RemoveRegistryValues" in both the log files looks like they are doing the exact same thing.

Attached Files

•  CorrectMajUpgrade.zip   280.99KB   565 downloads

Edited by pjaiswal, 30 September 2008 - 21:15.

[pjaiswal]

The other log file is attached to this message. The format is .7z, I had to use this to compress it according to the size restrictions. Can be viewed with 7Zip.

Attached Files

•  IssueMajUpgrade.7z   407.04KB   44 downloads

[pjaiswal]

These are the components for the registry keys being deleted
Registry.28E0F423_114C_4D81_82CB_E6992A89372F
Registry6.28E0F423_114C_4D81_82CB_E6992A89372F

[Stefan Krueger]

(I haven't had the time to look at your log files). Try moving RemoveExistingProducts to a place later in the sequence so that the uninstall of the old version happens after the install of the new version.

[pjaiswal]

I have it between InstallValidate & InstallInitialize currently. I changed it to run after InstallFinalize and that did not help. It broke a lot of other things.
Any other suggestions?

[Stefan Krueger]

Are these registry keys, entries, or values? Are they key path of their respective components? Is the key (folder icon in regedit) marked to be deleted during uninstall, even if there are entries left?

[pjaiswal]

I am not sure if I am understanding your question correctly. These are Registry Keys under one Folder Icon in regedit. Each solution has a Key (folder icon) under a parent key. For example
HKLM/Software/X
InstalledSolutions
A
B
C
License
A
B
C

These above are the registry keys, all folder icon in regedit, where each have values associated with them. With Major Upgrade for "A", the registry key thats getting deleted is "X", and so all keys for the solutions are getting deleted too.

The regkey HKLM/Software/X gets set by a merge module which is shared by all the solutions - A, B, C.


And, how do I check if these are marked to delete during uninstall?
If these were marked to delete, then they should have been delted with Major upgrade of Solution B as well.

[Stefan Krueger]

Check the Registry table in the merge module and in each of your msi files to see if there's an entry named - or * under the HKLM/Software/X key.

[pjaiswal]

There is no such entry in the registry table of the msi or msm.Thanks!

[Stefan Krueger]

Then I don't know why the entires get removed. Maybe a combination of validation, logging and ProcessMonitor (to see when the entries get deleted and match that to an action in the log) might help to understand the issue.