File not overwritten Problem ...

[raffelm]

I have a file that is not getting overwritten that I *want* to get
overwritten.

The line from the log file:
MSI (s) (A4:D8): File: C:\PROGRA~1\PEACHT~1\company\RPTDATAI.DAT;
Won't Overwrite; No patch; Existing file is unversioned but modified

original file date 6/23/03
newer file date 5/4/4

Currently, REINSTALLMODE is set to omus. So I would have expected
this file to get overwritten as the file on the disk is older than the
file in the install. So I am little confused as to why it would not
overwrite the file.

-----
Now the, there is something else that may factor in here. This is a
little complicated: I'll try to explain the best I can.

The original file (6/23/3 file) was actually an update to existing
install. The existing install used MSI. The update did not use MSI.
The newer file (5/4/4) uses MSI. It seems, this combination of using
MSI, not using MSI and then using MSI again is part of the problem.
I'd like to here comments, if anyone has any on this.

Thanks
Matt

[Stefan Krueger [MVP]]

Please read the documentation about File Versioning Rules very carefully - this is one of the most common misunderstandings:

For unversioned files, Windows Installer doesn't care about the date of the file in your msi package. It only looks at the existing file on the user's hard disk. If this file has been modified by the user it will not be overwritte, to preserve user data. To determine whether a file has been changed by the user Windows Installer compares the "create" date of the file to the "last modified" date. If the modified date is more recent than the create date, the file will not be overwritten.

To force an overwrite of this file you could add it to the RemoveFile table so that MSI deletes the existing file during the update.

--
Stefan Krueger
Microsoft Windows Installer MVP

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