Forum Discussion

Iron Contributor

Jun 15, 2020

Windows 10 2004 - MSIX Not Updating -Please check whether the Msixvc support services are installed.

We use MSIX for one of our LOB applications at my organization. We recently updated some machines to Windows 10 2004 to test it before rolling it out to the rest of the company. One problem we ha...

20H1

MSIX

JulesB

Copper Contributor

Jun 01, 2021

That seems unbelievable if it is as basic a problem as it seems. I assume very few people must be using MSIX to deploy their applications so MS have abandoned the technology.

StephenWhiteD3G

Iron Contributor

Jun 01, 2021

JulesB GToison

Agreed, I feel like this problem and the slow pace to get it resolved has made it seem like MSIX is no longer a priority. There also still seems to be a lot of friction regarding transitioning from MSI to MSIX for various devs/studios/publishers/etc, so you are right that the adoption has been anemic. This is really a separate topic though... but in the context of this problem, it isn't encouraging.

As far as what I have found out - the ticket I have with Microsoft for this bug in the Partner Center got closed as "resolved". Based on the ticket close notes, there was a code fix applied on 4/13/2021 that "works around" this problem but it only seems to work if the URI's used by the app bundle are different from the previous version. Beyond that, they said that they are working on a full-term solution with the "DO Team" (not sure who that is).

At this point I am thinking that we will not see the app installer fix until 21H2. Also I am not sure if the code fix containing the work around is even available in 21H1 since 21H1 seemed to have been finalized months ahead of time due to its disappointing number of new additions versus what is available in the current dev branch / release preview of Windows 10.

GToison
Copper Contributor
Jun 02, 2021
I suspect that the DO in "DO team" is the delivery optimisation.
At least in our case the .msix file is fine: if we download it separately we can install it without any problem.
The issue seems to be in the system that downloads that file.
- JulesB
  Copper Contributor
  Jun 02, 2021
  Yes it's no problem if you download the .msix or .msixbundle. The issue is with the .appinstaller file and the misleading XML error.
  
  We pretty much want to use msix for the automatic updates so that's not a lot of use for us especially as in some cases we are installing on client machines. Asking them to re-start their computer or stop and start a service isn't really a workable solution.
  - John_Torjo
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 07, 2021
    Hi everyone,
    
    If anyone is interested, I have a workaround that I'm currently testing.
    
    So, the idea is to do basically parse your .appinstaller file, download the .msixbundle locally, and launch it. Sure it sucks, but it's the best workaround I could come up with, knowing this crappy bug.
    (the idea is - if you download and launch the .msixbundle, it works).
    If anyone's interested, I can share the code (it's C#)
    
    You would need to update your code:
    
    protected override async void OnLaunched(LaunchActivatedEventArgs e) {
    if (setup_kit_util.has_update_downloaded_locally() && await setup_kit_util.launch_update_kit()) {
    Application.Current.Exit();
    return;
    }
    ...
    }
    
    and somewhere in your code's initialize routine, add this:
    await Task.Run(async () => await setup_kit_util.download_update_task());
    
    Best,
    John