Multi installs of product leads to Uninstall failing

[srobinson]

What we want to achieve is the user being able to install multiple versions of our product side by side. Our installer is very simple so this does not seem difficult itself.

But I have noticed now that attempting to uninstall a version of the product when several are present does not complete entirely - the shortcuts in the start menu are not entirely removed, and when the install dir contained empty directories, they were not removed either.


By experimenting with advanced installer I have sort of figured out why, I just wonder if it is known/intended behavior, or a vague sort of bug...


Problem is that my release process involves taking the previous version .aip file, changing the product name "my product vA.B" and product version "A.B.0", and then I generate a new product code (At some point I figured a new product code was necessary to allow side by side installs with old versions).
I do NOT have either of the two flags "Automatically upgrade..", "Do not install older.." set. ( this seems logical to me)

I have realized now that doing it this way leads to all versions having the same 'Upgrade Code'.
So I assume that starting a new AI project for each version would give me what I need, but it would be a slight pain to redo all the project settings each time... So maybe this is a bug...? Cheers

[Mike]

Hi,

Actually this is not a bug neither a feature. This is simply the way Windows Installer works. From Windows Installer's point of view, a shortcut is pointing to a component. A component is identified by a identifier (the GUID).

What happens is you have the same GUID for the components in both your application versions (since you started from the same project). When you uninstall one of them, Windows Installer will detect in the other application the component still present. In this case it will decide to keep the shortcut.

The workaround is to manually change the GUID for all components that contain a shortcut, whenever you change the version of the application.

All the best,
Mihai