Windows 7 installer package error 2869 while installing an upgraded version

Question

I have an application with version no: 1.0.0.1, which is an upgrade to the older version 1.0.0.0.

When I try to install the new version 1.0.0.1, when my system already has the older version installed, I am getting the error 2869.

But if I uninstall the older version manually & than try to install the newer version, then it installs successfully.

I changed the product code for new version. But did not change the upgrade code.

Can anyone kindly let me know the reason and fix for this?

Answer 1

In the MSI ProductVersion property only the first 3 fields are significant when comparing versions using the major upgrade logic. So in your case MSI will consider 1.0.0.1 and 1.0.0.0 to both be 1.0.0. FindRelatedProducts will therefore not detect this situation as an upgrade.

The way I approach this is to create a 'packed' version where the 3rd and 4th fields are combined into one using, say (4096*f3 + f4), but this will behove you never to have a 4th field (build number) greater than 4096, and a 3rd field no bigger than 15, since 0xFFFF is the maximum for a version field.

This allows us to perform major upgrades between individual nightly builds, not just service packs, without requiring a bootstrapper to achieve a minor upgrade, and we can have a new productcode for every build so there's no need to have to remember to update it manually when the need arises.