Enhancements and Updates: Your Guide to the Newest Version

Table of Contents

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Upgrades Page

This page allows you to specify a list of products that will be removed from the target computer when your package will be installed.

Application Versions

This section allows you to manage older versions of your package which were created with Advanced Installer.

Automatically upgrade older product versions

For this option to work, you must respect certain rules when Changing Version .

When upgrading older versions, the install location of the previous version will be used as default for the current installation process. This applies only if both versions are built with Advanced Installer 3.8 or greater.

Uninstalling a version installed as Administrator only works when the current user has Administrator rights as well.

In order to use this option to upgrade an older installation you can follow these steps:

open the AIP (Advanced Installer Project file) you used to build the old package
make sure that the “Automatically upgrade older product versions” option is set in the “Upgrades” page
make the modifications you want to include in the upgraded package
go to the “Product Details” page and increase the version of the package
when you move from this page you are prompted about the update method
answer “Generate new” (the package’s old and new version must have different Product Codes)
build and install the AIP

If you run the upgraded package on a machine which has the old package installed, the old package will be removed automatically (and silently) and the upgraded package will be installed.

A per-user installation cannot upgrade a per-machine installation and a per-machine installation cannot upgrade a per-user installation.

Allow side by side installs of different product versions

Select this option in order to allow different versions of the same application to be installed on the same computer. For this option to work, you must respect some versioning rules when Changing Version . Also, you can follow these steps:

open the AIP (Advanced Installer Project file) you used to build the old package
make sure that the “Allow side by side installs of different product versions” option is set in the “Upgrades” page
make the modifications you want to include in the upgraded package
go to the “Product Details” page and increase the package’s version
when you move from this page you are prompted about the update method
answer “Generate new” (the package’s old and new version must have different Product Codes)
build and install the AIP

You must build the older product version with this option enabled for the intended effect.

When authoring side by side installs of different versions of an application, it is recommended that some rules should be used. The install locations, registry entries, shortcuts etc. should differ from one version to another. If they are not different, the present items will be overwritten when a new version is installed. Also, they will be removed when a version of the application is uninstalled even if the other versions still uses them.

If the installation folder selected by the user is the same folder used for the installation of an older version then that version will be removed. The user can choose a previously used install location from the drop-down list in the “Select Location” dialog, forcing an upgrade.

Customize Advanced Installer upgrade rules

By enabling this option you will have access to the Advanced Installer custom upgrade rows. You can customize them to suit your needs but you are not allowed to delete them. When this option is unchecked these rows are reset to their original state.

Use original installation path when upgrading

By default a package uses the installation path of an older version when upgrading. If this option is unchecked, during an upgrade the package will use the Application Folder path defined in Install Parameters page, ignoring the original one.

Allow downgrade (a lower version will be able to downgrade a higher version)

Check this option to enable the ability to install an older version over a newer version of the package, for example version 1.0.0 being able to upgrade version 2.0.0.

Change Product Code and component’s GUIDS

By clicking on this hyperlink you can change the Product Code of the package and the GUIDS of all its components.

Order

In this section you can specify the upgrade process’ sequence.

Uninstall old version first and then install new version. - In this case, the installer removes the old applications entirely before installing the new applications.
Uninstall old version first, reboot and then install new version - select this option if you want to remove the old application before rebooting the system and installing the new version.
Install new version first and then uninstall old version. - In this case, the installer updates files before removing the old applications. Only the files being updated get installed during the installation. If the old application’s removal fails, then the installer rolls back both the old application’s removal and the new application’s install.

The Install new version first and then uninstall old version option will work only if the files’ components don’t change from the old version to the new one (their names and GUIDs remain the same).

Upgrades

In this section you can specify other products that will be upgraded when your package will be installed. Note that these packages must be MSI-based, you cannot use this page to upgrade packages which don’t use the Windows Installer technology. When you click the[New… ] button Advanced Installer shows a dialog which allows you to select the target installation package from the disk.

Adding a new upgrade

Use the [New… ] toolbar button, the “New…” context menu item or press the Insert key while the focus is in the list.

Editing an upgrade

Use the “Edit…” context menu item or press theSpace key while a list item is selected.

Removing an upgrade

Use the [Delete ] toolbar button, the “Delete” context menu item or press the Delete key while a list item is selected.

Topics

Product Info Tab
Specify information on your upgrade.
Upgrade Action Tab
Specify upgrade actions

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Enhancements and Updates: Your Guide to the Newest Version