We are having trouble installing new versions of our application on Vista machines. We have tried to install the new version over the old version but for some reason Vista wants to use the old version that it has somewhere. We have tried looking into what happens with the Shadow Copy feature and it appears that this is what is causing the problem. We have even put the new version into a different folder and pointing the shortcut there but again Shadow Copy wants to take over. The workaround that we found was to disable the Restore feature, delete the old app from the Recylce bin, enable the Restore feature and then install the new version of the app. The problems that we have with this is that, as developers we do not have Administrator privileges and we have over 1000 machines that we have to push the MSI file to. If the machine has never had the application we have no problems. Also, we have two sites that have the app on a server and we have no problems there. It is only when we try to push the app to the client machines that have an existing copy of the app.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to resolve this issue?

Thank you.

Larry

Ouch. what is different about this site. is there diferent group security policies, or maybe a different vista sp? if it works on the other site, but not on this one the difference is what is preventing you from installing it here.

Can you set up a "trusted installer" group with some of the admins rights? I know this is not the time to be messing with rights but you have 1000 machines to push.

could you tell me a bit more info about the set up

ken

Ken:

Let me make a couple of clarifications. We have a total of 4 sites that we run this app at. One of them runs the app on a Citrix server and they have no problems at all. Another site runs the app on an NT 2003 server and there we have some (not all) users that for some reason the Shadow Copy of the previous version is being run off of their pc rather than the new version off of the server. The other two sites have the app pushed to the pcs via an MSI file. We have the admin rights to push the app to them but when the users try to access the shortcut for the new version the Shadow Copy for the old version gets ran instead of the new copy.

Lemur:

In answer to your question; no, we still have problems with the app. If the vista machine has never had the app it will install and run just fine. but, if there is an old version of the app already on the vista machine then that is the version that is run.

I am just wondering how do upgrades get done on other software apps? For instance, whenever Acrobat comes out with a new upgrade it seems like there is no problem doing the upgrade. I haven't looked but doesn't the .exe file and all other files, etc. remain the same and are put into the existing directory?

What we try to do is remove the old version, files, icon. etc. and then push the new version to the same place. But, that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Thanks.

Lemur:

Question 1: The files are stored in Program Data on the C: drive.

Question 2: How do we know if Volume Shadow Snapshot Service configuredon that location? Where would we be able to find that out?

Question 3: Yes. The client does show up in the Add/Remove programs.

Thank you.

Lemur:

Yes, we have looked at one of the test machines and Shadow Copy is configuredon for that location.

That's the problem. We don't want it configured on because Vista keeps wanting to run the old version of the app.

Is there some way that it can be turned off programmatically when we do the push? Do the install then turn it back on? As stated in my earlier post, we have over 1000 users at one location and there is no way that we can turn each one off manually.

Thanks