Hi all,

We are quite new in the updater and we are facing some issues to make it work properly.
When launching updater.exe manually, both the download and the installation of the new version work fine.
However, at the very end, we keep getting the error:

Error: Update installation failed

and

Some of the updates failed to install properly

What can be the reason(s)? Is there any way to debug this?
Thanks in advance.
Best,
JC

Hello JC and welcome to Advanced Installer forums,

Any update defined in the Updates Configuration file uses a detection criteria. This criteria is usually a file or a registry entry which contains the package version. If it's not met after the update is installed, the Updater will show this message. Therefore, you need to make sure you specified a correct file or registry entry in the Update Installed Detection tab of the Update Properties page.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Catalin

I know this post is old but the problem can still bite, like in my case, so is there any way to debug/trace this error so we can find the root cause? I've already checked the Update Installed Detection part and everything seems to be in order. It'd be helpful if there's some "debug mode" that can be enabled in the updater to get to the specifics of the error.

In my case, the updater downloads the file but error occurs at the point where it tries to install the update. The strange thing is, this only happens on a recent build, e.g. when upgrading from version x.x.x.2919 to x.x.x.292x. Upgrading from x.x.x.2912 has no error, though. The main installer has the OLDPRODUCTS workaround for the fourth part of the version number, so this should be covered already. So I'm not sure what else is triggering this.

UPDATE1: Set loglevel to "Debug|Trace|Error" in Updater and it spit out some cryptic messages in updater.log, including the ff. error, of w/c I can't seem to find the meaning. UPDATE2: Can't find this error in MS lookup tool UPDATE3: The log file specified in the /L*VX switch in the command line under the Update Installer tab of the Updates Configuration project seem to have caused the error. The filepath starts w/ %LocalAppData% - it seems the updater services has trouble resolving this when updating w/o elevation. Using something else like %TEMP% or %ALLUSERSPROFILE% seem to have no issue. Hope this helps some poor fellow out there and hoping also that updater logs are less cryptic than the above.

Hello,

Thank you for your followup on this and for sharing your solution with us.

I am glad everything is working as expected now.

Best regards,
Catalin

Thanks, but I think we would still want a more detailed updater logging going forward, to help troubleshoot issues like this. I hope you can relay this to the developers in case it's a possible improvement.

Hello Albert,

Most of the updater errors are explained in the "Updater" article.

However, the error you were encountering wasn't so specific because it wasn't really related to the Updater itself. Since the %localappdata% is a per-machine location, it is normal that it requires administrative privileges.

I will forward your request to our development team and we will further investigate this to see if we can improve the logging of our Updater. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

Best regards,
Catalin

I am having the same issue. Have checked "Update Installed Detection" tab couple times and still do not see the reason for having "Update installation failed". I also enabled extra logging in "Update Installer" tab by setting command line to /L*V "C:\temp\updates.txt" but there is not error in generated file. It is really painful to debug this

Hey Petr,

Please note I have replied to your email that discusses the same subject.

Best regards,
Catalin

Catalin wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 23, 2024 11:56 am

Hey Petr,

Please note I have replied to your email that discusses the same subject.

Best regards,
Catalin

Can you please explain what the was issue?

Can you please explain what the was issue?

koutnypetr wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 22, 2024 4:34 pm

I am having the same issue. Have checked "Update Installed Detection" tab couple times and still do not see the reason for having "Update installation failed". I also enabled extra logging in "Update Installer" tab by setting command line to /L*V "C:\temp\updates.txt" but there is not error in generated file. It is really painful to debug this

Hello,

The most common cause for this error is the detection criteria.

You can avoid this by either:

- setting a correct condition

- checking the "Do not try to detect if the update was installed" option from the "Update Installed Detection" tab

This condition is evaluated twice:

- once before the installation --> here, the condition must be false, meaning the update is not installed ==> install it

- once after the installation --> here, the condition must be true, meaning the update was correctly installed

Best regards,
Catalin