Jump to content


This is a ready-only archive of the InstallSite Forum. You cannot post any new content here. / Dies ist ein Archiv des InstallSite Forums. Hier können keine neuen Beiträge veröffentlicht werden.
Photo

Upgrade to Windows Installer 2.0 from older ver.


3 replies to this topic

digitalfootprint

digitalfootprint
  • Members
  • 8 posts

Posted 13 August 2002 - 21:56

We are in the process of deploying a custom application in our environment that requires a version of the MSI 2.0 or greater.

During our initial tests we found numerous issues with our machines after the machine who had an older version was updated. We use a login script to check the MSI version. Our target platforms are 98,NT4,2000 and XP.

Issue.
1. We use a silent install and surpress the reboot. This causes applications who are managed under the MSI engine to either not work or prompt the user to insert the installation CD. A reboot so far has fixed this problem.

Question
Has anybody had experience deploying an upgrade to the MSI engine on a large scale? If so can you please share that experience.

skippy31152

skippy31152
  • Members
  • 6 posts

Posted 14 August 2002 - 21:28

Afternoon,

We deployed MSI 2.0 here at my client on rougly 6000 computers via GPO.  We ended up aborting at about 60% complete due to some problems we had.  The primary problem we had was that some (around 150 users) could not do the following after the upgrade:

Search files or folders
Open in new window within Internet Explorer
Use the "Find" function in Internet Explorer
Click on any link that needs to open in new window


We did have some (around 10) computers that exhibited the same symptoms as you describe, but they were the minority.  The solution we found was to rebuild the users profile, which can be time consuming and not much fun.

I've had a ticket in with IBM/Microsoft support for around 3 weeks now, and they have no idea what the issue is.  

On a side note, SP3 includes the Windows Installer 2 engine, and I've started to notice more folks reporting the same type symptoms we saw during the WI2 upgrade.  Microsoft may have a problem.

My two bits?  I'm waiting to deploy the rest of WI2 until I have a fix for what was broken the first time around.

Matt Nowell

P_Sinclair

P_Sinclair
  • Members
  • 4 posts

Posted 16 August 2002 - 22:35

Similar problem here, only we have only had this problem on Windows 2000 and NT4.  I'm pretty sure Windows XP comes with MSI 2.0 preinstalled which is why we dont have the issue with that OS.

about 80% of the time, a reboot fixes everything.
If not, everything works fine but Office needs to be reinstalled before it will work.

Once.. we had a case where every single product installed with an MSI needed to be totally removed and then reinstalled.

Tthere doesn't seem to be any kind of fix. Only a work around.
The only way (i've found) to really make sure it doesn't happen is to NOT delay the reboot until after the install. Force the reboot as soon as the update takes place, then continue with the install after windows comes back up.

Not that this really helps much in terms of a fix, but hopefully it gives you some ideas on dealing with it.

luke_s

luke_s
  • Full Members
  • 532 posts

Posted 19 August 2002 - 00:35

I have had problems similar to this and the problem was that I needed a reboot.

When the windows installer engine upgrades from a previous version, it needs to replace some of the dll's, but because they are in use, a reboot is required to release and update these dll's.
This will in turn lose all file associations with windows installer installed programs until the reboot has been run.