I certainly understand that supporting this properly might require
non-trivial amounts of work for the DIFx team. They'd probably need to add
significant additional logic for reinstalling the old driver during a
rollback, for example. However, excuses like this really shouldn't cut it
because at the end of the day, they break core, commonly-used functionality
in Windows Installer.
DIFxApp is intended for bundling drivers with applications. Applications
are not frozen in time, and are continually updated to fix bugs and add new
features. Users must upgrade applications. I'm guessing that is probably
the reality for 99% of the people on this mailing list who use WiX.
RemoveExistingProducts is the publicly documented, supported method of doing
this in Windows Installer. The DIFxApp team has stated that upgrades are
not supported via RemoveExistingProducts. Suppose we make the statement
that a setup platform (like Windows Installer) is broken if application
upgrades (e.g. major upgrades) do not work. We can then make the statement
that DIFxApp breaks Windows Installer, because it does not support Windows
Installer's method of upgrades.
What is their proposed alternative for upgrades if not
RemoveExistingProducts? Ask the user to manually uninstall the old version,
and then install the new one?!? Realistically that is not a user-friendly
solution and makes the setup look unprofessional.
The workaround I found of placing RemoveExistingProducts between
InstallValidate and InstallInitialize only makes the issue less severe.
Placement of RemoveExistingProducts in this position is far from ideal,
because if the user presses "Cancel" after the old product is uninstalled,
then they will be left with no product at all on the computer (they would
have to manually reinstall the old version). That violates one of the core
design principles of Windows Installer, which is that it's supposed to be
transactional and setup should be an all-or-nothing proposition. Pressing
"Cancel" should *always* roll back the computer to exactly how it was before
setup was begun - that includes restoring old versions of the software.
The fact that Microsoft's hardware division is distributing MSI files
susceptible to this bug is interesting. Other OEMs are doing it too. It
wasn't just me that fell into this trap. In my opinion, if DIFxApp doesn't
support commonly-used built-in Windows Installer actions then they need to
document this in MSDN with big, bold letters so that setup authors don't
fall into this trap which appears to be so easy to fall into, and so time
consuming to debug! This is something that needs to be front page and
center in the documentation for ANY DIFxApp-related documentation (e.g. the
WiX extension, the DIFxApp documentation in MSDN, other setup authoring
programs that build on MSI/DIFx, etc). I'll bet most setup authors using
DIFxApp are also using RemoveExistingProducts because they didn't know they
weren't supposed to do that. Every setup I examined had
RemoveExistingProducts and was either affected by the bug, or the setup
authors found my workaround on their own, or got lucky. (Any maintainers
for WiX documentation want to add this to the DIFx extension documentation?
I wouldn't know where to start with this process.) Perhaps if enough people
complain, they will fix the design fault in DIFxApp.
General rant: this is just another example of Microsoft products not
working well together. For a marketing campaign slogan of "better
together", they seem to be doing rather poorly at that at times. There
seems to be an acute lack of viewing the big picture when looking at small
details like this. A second example: I recently had the misfortune of
having to implement drag-and-drop support in our application. Who knew
dragging and dropping a simple bitmap could be so complicated?! Try
implementing simple drag-and-drop code for a bitmap in C# / .NET / WinForms.
Then try dragging/dropping to/from Microsoft Word. Hint: it won't work.
This is because MS Word only supports device independent bitmaps, while .NET
only supports device dependent bitmaps. I reported this issue to the Visual
Studio team:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/652248/. And
they said they won't fix it: it is by design. I guess they figured it would
be enough to impose a requirement that other programs also support DDBs.
The Microsoft Office team is apparently isolating themselves from customers
because I found no place to properly report a bug like I did in Visual
Studio (they probably want more of my money first before any form of two-way
communication can begin). Maybe they think it is enough to require that
other programs support DIBs. Classic example of pointing the finger at the
other party, I guess. And yet, at the end of the day - drag-and-drop
between two flagship Microsoft products does not work. It's another example
of not seeing the big picture and refusing to do anything about it when
customers try to point this out. It's very frustrating to deal with.
(Heck... if one of those two products was open source, I would have
seriously considered fixing it and submitting a patch...)
James
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Hamflett [mailto:r...@snsys.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 08:00
To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] DIFxApp does not properly rollback to the old
driverwhen doing a major upgrade
I emailed difxt...@microsoft.com and received this response.
"AFAIK, Difx doesn't do anything to explicitly support
RemoveExistingProducts. The scenario described on that page would require
it to rollback a partial install of a new driver and the previous uninstall
of the old driver. The limited functionality in the rollback mechanism of
DIFx does not support that."
So it looks like there isn't going to be a fix for this.
Rob
On 11/03/2011 14:00, Rob Hamflett wrote:
> I appear to be looking at the same problem. I was able to reproduce
> it by hitting 'cancel' near the end of an uninstall and letting it
> rollback. After that uninstallation failed. Performing a repair
> fixed things. Did you email the difx team at the email address Quinton
suggested, and if so, did you ever hear anything back.
>
> Thanks,
> Rob
>
> On 10/12/2010 20:37, James Johnston wrote:
>> Seeing as how this seems to be a fundamental problem with DIFxApp not
>> handling all the upgrade possibilities well, I was curious to see how
>> other products do things and so I ripped apart some MSIs in Orca. I
>> was looking to see if DIFxApp was set up the same way (CustomAction
>> table). I also inspected the placement of the RemoveExistingProducts
>> action since after my previous e-mail I believe that this plays a
>> critical role in whether this corrupted system state may occur.
>> Since I haven't seen any other indication or documentation on the
>> Internet (a Google search for RemoveExistingProducts and DIFxApp
>> reveals little), I thought it would be useful to report my findings
>> so others can see what some commercial software is doing. My
>> findings:
>>
>> All products using DIFxApp place MsiProcessDrivers and
>> MsiCleanupOnSuccess actions in the normal places. CustomAction types
>> are always the same. I identified the program used to compile the
>> MSI by looking at the self-named custom actions each install tool
>> tends to create (e.g. InstallShield has its own DLL with tons of custom
actions).
>>
>> Refer to
>> http://jpassing.com/2007/06/16/where-to-place-removeexistingproducts-
>> in-a-ma jor-msi-upgrade/ to better understand the placement of
>> RemoveExistingProducts action. Examining this table leads me to
>> believe that placement between InstallInitialize and InstallFinalize
>> is the best place, since a canceled setup will always leave the old
>> version on the computer, no matter what. But this doesn't seem to
>> work with DIFxApp due to its bug, as previously noted.
>>
>> My product (with the rollback problem): Compiled with WiX and uses
DIFxApp.
>> RemoveExistingProducts is placed after InstallInitialize. According
>> to the previous link, a failure at any time (uninstall or reinstall)
>> results in only the old version remaining: leaving system state
>> exactly as it was found. Unfortunately, as previously noted, a bug
>> in DIFxApp prevents this from happening.
>>
>> Apple Mobile Device Support (included with iTunes; presumably their
>> iPod drivers, etc.). Compiled with WiX and uses DIFxApp.
>> RemoveExistingProducts is placed after InstallFinalize. Probably the
>> DIFxApp bug is not a problem here, because the new version is
>> installed before the old version is uninstalled. An error in the new
>> version setup (from DIFx or other source) would still leave the old
version and its drivers untouched. An error in
>> the old version uninstall would leave the new version& its drivers
>> untouched. According to the table at the above link, the pitfall is
>> that if the uninstall fails, then BOTH versions of the product remain
>> installed on the computer. This seems like a very inconsistent,
>> illogical state to be in; I can imagine that there could be some
>> issues with a lot of products (including mine) if this were to
>> happen. (Perhaps an MSI expert can convince me otherwise?
>> Otherwise, I wonder if Apple's software can get itself in a bad way
>> if I click Cancel at just the right moment.)
>>
>> Microsoft LifeCam (webcam driver). Don't know what compiled this; I
>> didn't see any obvious indications. It uses DIFxApp.
>> RemoveExistingProducts is placed after InstallInitialize. It
>> therefore appears to be in a very similar configuration as with my
>> product, and I believe it would leave the user's DIFxApp state
>> inconsistent if the upgrade was canceled at just the right moment.
>> It is interesting to note that the MSI file is wrapped by a
>> bootstrapper: the MSI itself throws no UI. The bootstrapper does NOT
>> present the user with a Cancel button. Perhaps this is a reason why?
>>
>> Oracle VirtualBox (virtual network drivers). Compiled with WiX and
>> uses DIFxApp. RemoveExistingProducts is placed between
>> InstallValidate and InstallInitialize. This seems like the best
>> place to put it. Uninstall happens first, so there's no possibility
>> of having both versions at the same time. If the uninstall fails,
>> then the old version remains. If the install fails, then nothing
>> remains on the computer (i.e. the old version is not reinstalled). I
>> don't see how this DIFxApp bug would be a problem in this scenario since
the old version isn't reinstalled.
>>
>> Western Digital SmartWare (some proprietary driver for external hard
drive).
>> Compiled with Advanced Installer and uses DIFxApp.
>> RemoveExistingProducts is placed between InstallValidate and
>> InstallInitialize, like with VirtualBox.
>>
>> HP OfficeJet 8500. Compiled with WiX. RemoveExistingProducts is
>> placed after InstallInitialize so I suspect their installer has the same
bug.
>>
>> Intel Network Connections driver, MS Virtual PC 2007, and VMware
>> Workstation
>> 7: these products use Windows Installer but have proprietary,
>> non-DIFxApp custom actions for installing drivers.
>>
>> Logitech webcam driver, Dell V310 printer driver, NVIDIA graphics
>> drivers, ATI Radeon graphics driver, Intel HD graphics driver, Intel
>> DH55HC drivers, Intel HD Audio drivers: these products did not
>> appear to use Windows Installer for installing the drivers. (Some
>> drivers had MSI files for helper/utility programs but did not have
>> the MsiDriverPackages table so I conclude they do something else).
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> James Johnston
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Quinton Tormanen [mailto:quint...@deltamotion.com]
>> Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 17:53
>> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.
>> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] DIFxApp does not properly rollback to the
>> old driverwhen doing a major upgrade
>>
>> Thanks for digging into this further. The support e-mail for DIFx
>> Tools is difxt...@microsoft.com. I have received responses over the
>> years from different people, but never any resolution to my problems.
>> If that e-mail address is no longer valid, then I can give you the
>> addresses of the specific people that replied. Please keep me posted on
what you find out.
>>
>> --Quinton
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: James Johnston [mailto:johnst...@inn-soft.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 3:46 PM
>> To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
>> Subject: [WiX-users] DIFxApp does not properly rollback to the old
>> driverwhen doing a major upgrade
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> As some of you have probably noticed, there has been some discussion
>>> recently regarding problems with DIFxApp causing rollbacks. I did
>> some more
>>> investigation and was able to reliably reproduce the issue and come
>>> up
>> with
>>> a very good idea on what is causing the problem. All investigation
>> was done
>>> with the version of DIFxApp included with Windows DDK version
>> 7600.16385.1;
>>> note that this will also reproduce with the version included with
>>> WiX
>> 3.0 /
>>> 3.5. It was done on a clean Windows XP SP2 virtual machine with
>>> .NET Framework 2.0; however we have observed the same problems on
>>> Windows
>> 7.
>>>
>>> As far as I can tell, this is a bug in the DIFxApp DLLs and/or the
>>> WiX extension for DIFxApp. If anyone knows some good workarounds,
>>> or how
>> to
>>> report this to the proper channels and get it fixed it would be much
>>> appreciated! From what I can tell, there exist situations in any
>> DIFxApp
>>> setup program doing an upgrade where if the user cancels the setup
>>> at
>> a
>>> certain point (or there is an error in the installation of the new
>> product)
>>> then the user's system will be hosed and they would be unable to
>> uninstall
>>> the product without some involved technical support.
>>>
>>> If the bug can't be fixed or worked around, I don't see how DIFxApp
>>> is suitable for use in a commercial product that needs to support
>> upgrades
>>> (i.e. all products). And since DIFxApp isn't open source, I can't
>>> go
>> in and
>>> just fix the problem. Very frustrating!
>>>
>>> ...
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -------
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