Forum Discussion

ChreesM's avatar
ChreesM
Brass Contributor
Oct 30, 2019

Winforms .exe in MSIX Package Does Not Startup After Auto Update

We are deploying a classic Winforms .exe via MISX. Approximately 20% of the time, the application does not start automatically after an auto update completes. After an update and failed start, we can...
Roy_MacLachlan's avatar
Roy_MacLachlan
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Aug 11, 2022

Hi MikeH,

 

The developer that is working on this is unable to re-create the experience and is asking for a further, more explicit breakdown of steps that re-trigger this experience. Looking at previous comments I do not see an exact list of steps.

 

Can you or someone following this discussion please provide this?

 

Thank you,

Roy

 

 

jastoneks's avatar
jastoneks
Copper Contributor
Aug 12, 2022
We are having a similar issue as well. We distribute the app via our website having users download and open the appinstaller file. The app installs & launches fine. After that even just trying to launch from the Start menu icon which is created doesn't launch the app until you click the Search icon in the taskbar. This has been happening ever since we moved to MSIX, on Windows 10, continued after updating to Win11, and still continues after I reformatted and reinstalled Win11 fresh.
  • MikeH's avatar
    MikeH
    Brass Contributor
    Oct 19, 2022
    Hi Christophe,

    For apps packaged with Conveyor [1] we have a workaround:

    1. We default to background updates, which don't have this issue.

    2. We have a tiny Win32 app that drives the package manager via the WinRT/C++ API and then starts the app once complete. If a packaged program wishes to force an update and knows one is available e.g. from a server poll, it simply invokes the bundled EXE and then quits. The stub EXE then drives the install/upgrade process whilst showing a progress bar and app logo, and relaunches the app when done.

    This gives a similar experience to the built-in "check on start" mode, but with these caveats:

    1. It's a feature of Conveyor, not MSIX. Therefore you must use Conveyor to package your app to get it.

    2. It's not yet a fully launched/documented feature. You'd probably want our help to activate it. We should launch it soon though.

    3. It's up to your app to notice there's a new version available and trigger the update process. For example by doing a quick poll whilst showing a splash screen. We don't block startup like the AppInstaller integration will do, because you may wish to overlap the update check with things like logging in to a server, instead of adding app latency every single time.

    You can see a short looping video of what the installer EXE looks like on our website: https://hydraulic.software/
  • GToison's avatar
    GToison
    Copper Contributor
    Oct 19, 2022

    In case that helps: we have the exact same problem but only on some computers: for some the problem always reproduces, for other it never happens.

    That's on the exact same application, so the problem seems to be either on the computer itself or some interaction between the computer and the application.

     

    We have not seen any obvious difference between the computers but we're not sure what to look for.

  • christophekeller's avatar
    christophekeller
    Copper Contributor
    Sep 02, 2022

    @Roy_MacLachlan any news on this?

    Has someone been able to work around this problem? (for example with a custom update process like alluded to here):

    https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/msix-docs/issues/59

    ??