Why doesn't a WIX major upgrade update all of my files?

Question

I've just taken over a complicated Visual Studio/WiX project (I've never used WiX) and all of a sudden upgrades no longer include all of the files.

We don't version every .dll so we need to do every upgrade as a Major Upgrade. (I know this isn't usually a good idea, but this is for an appliance that only gets upgraded by a script on a USB drive). I've read this article and made the following changes:

I changed the Product Id from a Guid to an '*' in the Product.wxs file
I added <MajorUpgrade Schedule="afterInstallFinalize" DowngradeErrorMessage="A newer version of [ProductName] is already installed."/> to the Product.wxs file (I've also tried Schedule=afterInstallExecute) with no luck.

I added the following block of code to the Product.wxs file:

<Upgrade Id='291EF866-D9B7-4103-B006-F11E50EEDC7B'> <UpgradeVersion 
OnlyDetect='no' Property='PREVIOUSFOUND' Minimum='1.0.0' 
IncludeMinimum='yes' Maximum='99.0.0' IncludeMaximum='no' />
</Upgrade>

So when I started this process some of the .dlls were updating and others weren't. Now most update, but not all. Here's a sample line from the log for one of the files that's not updating:

 MSI (s) (34:AC) [16:56:06:306]: Component: cmp9EE90E3731EB7F54B1D4B6D421BF1286; Installed: Absent;   Request: Local;   Action: Local

And here's the second line that refers to that file:

MSI (s) (34:98) [16:56:08:583]: Component: cmp9EE90E3731EB7F54B1D4B6D421BF1286; Installed: Local;   Request: Absent;   Action: Null

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 25 '17 at 04:47

1

You need to change Schedule to afterInstallInitialize in the MajorUpgrade element.

 Schedule="afterInstallInitialize"

And remove the Upgrade element.

You can check the specifics in this tutorial.

And I suggest you to read about the Schedule attribute from Here.

answered Jul 25 '17 at 04:47

Arkady Sitnitsky

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I got it to work by adding: . Thanks though - I'll try your suggestion. – Ben_G Jul 25 '17 at 15:22
Nope - that doesn't work. I'm going back to my original fix (see below). – Ben_G Jul 25 '17 at 15:38

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 25 '17 at 15:45

I finally got it to work with an obscure property called REINSTALLMODE and setting it's Value to amus. Thanks Hannes for this post!!

Here's the solution:

<Property Id="REINSTALLMODE" Value="amus" />

<Upgrade Id='291EF866-D9B7-4103-B006-F11E50EEDC7B'>
  <UpgradeVersion OnlyDetect='no' Property='PREVIOUSFOUND'
      Minimum='1.0.0' IncludeMinimum='yes'
      Maximum='99.0.0' IncludeMaximum='no' />
</Upgrade>

Why doesn't a WIX major upgrade update all of my files?

2 Answers2