Bogus Please wait, until the current program is finished uninstalling...

[haralds]

On Windows 7, if I go directly into the "Program and Features" control panel after installing our application, I cannot uninstall or do anything, because I get a bogus warning "Please wait, until the current program is finished uninstalling or being changed"

There is no process left running. I have to reboot to be able to uninstall from the control panel. Just running the Start Up item is fine, but creating that is actually discouraged under Windows 7.

Is there anything in our scripts that could trigger this?

On a related issue, if somebody does not use the sanctioned uninstall route, they can end up with bogus entries in the control panel from the previous versions (our product will feature differing rev numbers). Once there are older entries, they can be used to trigger uninstall of a newer version. But the entries will not be removed, since they do not match, and you get more! Although we have used the a forced "Uninstall/Install" in our recent updates, I suspect using Visual Patch would make things worse.

Is there a way to avoid this with customers, or do I have to add another script to look for these bogus entries and clean them up?

Thanks,
-- Harald

[Ulrich]

Just an idea - are you installing something else additionally to your product, like a third party library - .NET Framework, runtimes of any kind, etc.? There might be a reboot request triggered by Windows Installer that was suppressed, and that is now blocking any further changes to the software configuration.

Ulrich

[haralds]

No, not uninstalling anything (or installing) that requires reboot. But I will check the flag. Is there a way to force it, if it is wrong?

[haralds]

This might be better phrased as: Is there a way to clear it, if it is wrong?

[haralds]

One thought concerning the versioned Program management control panel entries: is there a way to set up uninstall to be version free? If it would always generate the same entry, there would be no duplicates.

[Ulrich]

I am not saying that it is wrong, neither can I affirm that it is this case at all. All I am saying is that this apparently bogus "Please wait" message may not be so bogus after all.

For example, if you are using certain dependencies, you can see that some of them may require a reboot after the installation. The .NET Framework 3.5 is such a case. Some people may need it to deploy their product, but it is not the only support package in their installer, so they may want to delay the system reboot that is required until the end of the whole process, which can be done by passing "/noreboot" to the MSI. Check the dependency scripts for full details.

What I am trying to say is that a reboot request may have been triggered somehow when you installed your software, and before all pending MSI tasks were performed, Windows may prevent the user to perform further system changes. I cannot tell you with certainty that it is what happened, or even what might have triggered it, this is just a suggestion for something to look into.

Ulrich

[haralds]

I understand that process. The only dependencies we install are:
- VS2008
- Flash
and only, if needed. Neither require reboot. And we ALWAYS get the condition, even if these are not installed any more.
Anyway, I need to put in some debugging to check for the flag.