351369 - Endless loop and uninformative error message in updater

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 340535

(Toolkit :: Application Update, enhancement)

Description

[Dylan McCall]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060821 Firefox/2.0b2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060821 Firefox/2.0b2

This is a feature request based on difficulties with the Firefox updater. When it fails to update, I am given a rather unhelpful error message which knocks me into an infinite loop of hitting OK unless I end the process via the task manager.

Today, I received an update for Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 which updated to Beta 2.
It downloaded fine, and 

There are two problems here, and I will start with the most simple one first.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
This isn't very easy to reproduce... try to mess up an update installation and look at the error it gives, I guess.
Actual Results:  
upon restarting the browser the update began to install.
I was soon given an error message:
"One or more files could not be updated. Please make sure all other applications are closed and that you have permission to modify files, and then restart Firefox or try again."

There is a single option: "OK"
Pressing OK causes it to try again. This does nothing and simply leads me back to the same window. This means that it tries again and again and again, and there is no way at all to cancel it except killing the process through the task manager!
Additionally, there is no explanation for what pressing OK will do. Will it close Firefox or try again?

Expected Results:  
What is needed here is a Cancel button, and a description of what the two buttons mean. ("Press OK to try again, or press Cancel to cancel the update").

There is also no further information on what has gone wrong. The updater should be able to figure out what file could not be updated; telling me that would make the error message extremely useful as I would be able to diagnose what has gone wrong.

It turned out after trying to uninstall FF 2 Beta 1 that Firefox.exe had become impossible to modify, which is probably what went wrong. Probably Windows's fault and I think it's a known error.

Comment 1

[Kai Liu]

(In reply to comment #0)

Do you have admin privs?
I'm not sure whether or not this post at MozillaZine is relevant:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2549883#2549883

Comment 2

[Dylan McCall]

Actually, that's my post. Yep, I have admin privileges.

It is completely related, although the topic at hand here is not really to do with why it failed, but rather how it failed.

The updater needs to be able to give up, and maybe even revert to the old version.
An offer to download and install the full Firefox as a fix would be good. I believe this happens, but only if you mess it up by deleting important files which it intends to patch.

Comment 3

[andrewz]

I just had this looping error message updating TB to 1.5.0.10 on Windows XP.  I have admin privileges.  I tried rebooting, but then TB would not start.  I resolved the issue by downloading and installing the full TB 1.5.0.10.

Comment 4

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Looks like bug 340535 so resolving dupe