"The update could not be installed"

[war59312]

Hi,

On the update to version 15 I got:

"The update could not be installed. Please make sure there are no other copies of Pale Moon running on your computer, and then restart Pale Moon to try again."

I upgraded from Pale Moon 12.3 Release 2 to version 15 on Windows7 x64 SP1.

The upgrade indeed failed! So then I downloaded the full installer and upgraded that way, was seems to be successful.

Yet, if I click help > "about pale moon" I get the button "Upgrade Now" and If I click it, I once again get the same error as above.

So seems something in the upgrade system is still broken.

Take Care,

Will

[megaman]

Do you have the installer?
If so, press CTRL+Shift+ESC, click on palemoon.exe, then press "End Process."
From there, install the installer.

[jaycelou]

Just a reminder to ANY installation of software application on Windows 7, right click to the exe file and click Run as administrator.

The conventional way of double click install may complete without error or warning but sometime the installed software might behave weirdly and doesn't work as expected.

This is my experience, hope it helps.

[war59312]

Pale moon is not running when I did the upgrade.

Installing as admin does NOT make a difference either, just did it again to be sure.

I really dont' want to have to recreate a new profile if I can help it.

Even worse is that fact that ever time I launch pale moon I get this error.

Did not realize it till now since it was the first time since the upgrade that I restarted Pale Moon (to try a reinstall)

[megaman]

Now, I wonder if plugincontainer.exe is running.

Edit: If you go to the profile folder and make a copy of it and paste it on a new installation, or paste it in a new folder in the desktop where you can find it easier, you still keep the stuff intact, maybe some settings on the Options you need to tweak, and disable, Restart, and enable, with another Restart, to be back in order. (This is more technical, but let's see if someone else can give other tips beforehand.)

[war59312]

Will try I guess.

Well I see C:\Users\Will\AppData\Local\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Pale Moon\updates\0\update.log reports:

SOURCE DIRECTORY C:\Users\Will\AppData\Local\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Pale Moon\updates\0
DESTINATION DIRECTORY C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon
NS_main: callback app open attempt 1 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 2 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 3 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 4 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 5 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 6 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 7 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 8 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 9 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: callback app open attempt 10 failed. File: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe. Last error: 5
NS_main: file in use - failed to exclusively open executable file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pale Moon\palemoon.exe

That shows up on every run of Pale Moon.

Update: OK that got me thinking. So I ran Pale Moon itself as admin and then I got the message of it upgrading itself.

And sure enough it was successful. So exited Pale Moon and ran again as a normal user, a few times to be sure, and no more error.

First time I have ever had to run Pale Moon as admin to make it update itself.

On the update, C:\Users\Will\AppData\Local\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Pale Moon\updates\0 was emptied.

C:\Users\Will\AppData\Local\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Pale Moon\active-update.xml changed from "pending" to "<updates xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2005/app-update"/>".

So looks like a bug has been introduced into the version 15 installer. Fails to access and carry out its command at these locations above.

[Moonchild]

I'm afraid this was a change introduced by the Mozilla team to favor the "silent installer service", removing the requirement to run the updater as administrator. I'll look into it and see about changing this back to administrative privileges. Not the first bug introduced in the installer with v15, it seems.

[Night Wing]

Moonchild,

Since this internal updater favors the Silent Maintenance service for Firefox, since I don't have the SMS installed on both of my two computers because I install Firefox now with a complete uninstall and then custom install to avoid the SMS thingy, should I not use the internal updater in Pale Moon anymore?

The more things the Firefox developers keep changing things with Firefox, the more irritation and aggravation the Firefox browser is causing me and it's collateral damage to Pale Moon.

[Moonchild]

I know it's collateral damage. And I'll be working on fixing/reverting these things. I see no reason thus far to go beyond version 15 of the Firefox code base for QUITE a while, so I'll have the chance to fix this all up, I hope.
The internal updater should simply be marked as requiring administrative privileges, which apparently has changed (or been removed) since the maintenance service would call it; the service would already be running with administrative rights. I'm not sure yet what the exact calling method is now, I'll have to investigate.

[war59312]

Thanks for looking into it.

PS: Thanks for unbanning me too.