204540 - Mozilla 1.4a installer wholly lame

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: Installer, defect)

Description

[Lloyd Wood]

I just installed Mozilla 1.4a after having 1.3 freeze up on me for the last time.

The 1.4a installer is wholly lame because:

1. even once you've downloaded the whole installer, it insists on network
access. had to kill zonealarm to get it to install.

2. Custom install doesn't work. Everything is greyed out, everything is
selected, nothing can be deselected. (This has been the case on all previous
Mozilla installs I've done, come to think of it.)

3. It trashed my bookmarks (both menu and personal toolbar) and replaced them
with anodyne defaults, made my default homepage the welcome to Mozilla page,
etc. But oddly, didn't trash drop-down autocompletion of urls, so they're all
still cached.

4. It spent forever cycling through the most bizarre repeating set of 'I'm just
installing' dialogs, including a dialog that had text suggesting an okay button
was to be clicked, but buttons were visible. Fortunately dialog dismissed itself.

5. It demanded I restart computer. Mozilla is application. Not system service.
Why restart computer?

6. First mozilla window opened lacked url bar at first (missing url bar
occasionally observed with earlier builds), wouldn't load pages other than 
default mozilla start. Had to quit and restart app to get it to work properly.

I think the install process could be made better/more seamless/more robust.
Trashing preferences should certainly be optional.

Comment 1

[Sean Su]

From 1., it sounds like you downloaded the network installer, as opposed to the
*-sea.exe (full) installer.

What you're seeing in 2. is the "Force Upgrade" feature.  The installer
basically detected that you had previously installed the greyed out components,
and that you have to 'upgrade them'/'reinstall them' in order for mozilla to run
properly.  Right now, Mozilla is not guaranteed to work with components built
from different/other versions of mozilla.  Sounds like the UI in that dialog
needs to better explain that.

From 5., it sounds like Mozilla was not fully shutdown before installation
started (files were in use that it couldn't replace).  Check your Task Manager
next time to make sure Mozilla.exe is not running, then start the installation.

This has been fixed in the latest trunk builds, which will end up in 1.4b.

3., 6., and maybe even 4. sound like a problem caused by mozilla not fully
shutdown before installation started.  See bug 190186 for more details on how
the installer resolved this problem.

A system restart is sometimes necessary after installation because files it
tried to replace could have been in use by another app, not necessarily that the
app being installed is a system service either.

You can try uninstalling mozilla (make sure the destination dir has been removed
completely), then installing the new build.  That will guarantee that
mozilla.exe is not running at installation time.

closing bug as dupe of bug 190816.  Feel free to reopen if you're still having
issues.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 190816 ***

Comment 2

[Grace Bush]

v

Comment 3

[Lloyd Wood]

Point 1 - I downloaded the whole self-extracting executable installer. That
should not require network access to install.

Comment 4

[Michael Gabriel]

do we really care about the 1.4a installer still ?

Comment 5

[Lloyd Wood]

Subsequent installers are also similarly lame.

Comment 6

[Michael Gabriel]

what is the version you are using now ?
did you uninstall your old version before ?
i guess its time to create a new clean profile...

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Lloyd's comment #5)
> Subsequent installers are also similarly lame.

what happens if install on an new/empty profile with a current trunk build? 

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

no reply from reporter.

closing invalid - tho most are probably WFM.  RBut really should not have been left open with multiple issues in one bug.

Please do not reopen this bug. Any problems should be addressed in existing bugs or opened in new bugs, with only one issue per bug.