Stop Running Program causes uninstall to fail.

[obiwan1130]

I am running into a weird situation with regards to uninstalling my
application written for the .NET compact framework. Here are the 2
processes and their results:

1. Install my application
2. Run my application (which creates data files in the install path)
3. Settings>Control Panel>Stop Running Progams...successfully stop the
application.
4. Settings>Control Panel>Remove Programs...attempt to remove programs
fails stating that the install path (\program files\my app) couldn't
be found/removed.

1. Install my application
2. Run my application
3. Soft Reset the device
4. Settings>Control Panel>Remove Programs...attempt to remove program
is successful.

I'm wondering if the compact framework has some sort of a hold/handle
on my install path--even after performing a stop program. It seems a
bit strange that the exact same process, but soft-reset instead of
stop programs results in no error message.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Peter Foot [MVP]]

Are you sure the application successfully shut down when you run the stop
programs applet. Perhaps your application or a dll is still executing. You
could try using the Remote Process Viewer (part of embedded visual tools) to
determine whether the app is successfully terminated.

Peter

 

[obiwan1130]

Thank you for your response.

I have taken a look at the running processes and my application is not
among them after doing a "stop program" from the control panel applet.
However, I would be curious to know the name of the .Net framework
process (if one exists) since perhaps this is the process that has a
hold on my install directory.

 

[obiwan1130]

I'm beginning to think that my problem doesn't have anything to do
with my application running at all...

My app creates 1 file in the install path when it is run. This is a
file called prefs.xml.

I have written a custom setup.dll that stops during the uninstall_init
with a messagebox. When the messagebox appears, I use file explorer to
manually delete the file. Then I click OK and the uninstall routine
finishes fine.

If I do NOT manually delete the prefs.xml file, the unintsall fails as
noted in my previous post.

If I change my setup.dll to delete the prefs.xml file, the uninstall
also fails.

Thanks for any insight.