Affinity Designer upgrade 1.8 failed

[Digas]

Hello,

Dell 64bit i7, 16GB RAM SSD HD., Win 10

The upgrade 1.8 for Designer failed and wiped the original program from my computer.  I have tried to download the program from my account and this too fails.  I have always upgraded whenever available and this has never happened before.  I also have Publisher and Photo on this computer and Photo on my MAC.  I am now wary of upgrading.  Has anyone any ideas?

[Callum]

Hi Digas,

Please could you try restarting your computer and then try right clicking the update installer and choose Run As Admin to see if this solves your issue?

Thanks

C

[Digas]

Hello Callum,

Thanks for your reply.  I have closed down and restarted, right clicked on .exe file and "Run as Administrator".  One thing different happened.  I got the message - COM Surrogate must be closed, which I accepted.  The update appeared to go ahead but ended with the message - Set up failed, as before.

 

I have never ever seen the message about COM Surrogate before and have no idea what it is.  What is more frustrating is that I downloaded the Installer from my own account with Affinity so I now have no access to Designer which I was well on the way to learning how to use and understanding.

[Callum]

Please could you call up the run box by holding down the Windows key and tapping the letter R and then enter the following %temp% \AffinitySetup into the run box and click ok.  This should open a folder, with some other folders in.  Open the latest folder and there should be 2 log files, Setup.log and SetupUI.log. Please send these two files to me this will allow me to investigate the setup failed error message further.

[Digas]

After posting my last reply, I found that someone else was having a problem with the upgrade (not the same as me) and it was suggested they go back to the last 1.7 upgrade.  I thought this was a good idea to try.  I did this, got the options to repair or uninstall so tried repair which went well and completed.  However, I still cannot open Designer and now Publisher has gone the same way!  How!  I didn't touch Publisher!

Looking via Control Panel, Programs and Features it would appear that I no longer have either Designer or Publisher installed.  BUT I can't download them from my account with Serif Affinity.  The downloads don't work.

I have however attached the latest files as requested.

Setup.log SetupUI.log

[Callum]

The logs are indicating that setup completed successfully. Are you still having issues with Affinity?

C

[Digas]

Thanks for asking Callum,

 

Yes, nothing has changed.  I no longer have Designer or Publisher access.  As far as I can see they are not even on my computer to uninstall!  I have just emailed Serif and am waiting for a reply.  I don't want to upgrade Photo in case the same thing happens!  As a last resort I will go into the registry and delete all things Serif and then try downloading from my Serif account again but I'm not too happy about doing that as more damage could be done.  At the moment I'm getting very disillusioned with Serif.  I've used their software for probably 20 years but at the moment I'm not a happy camper.

[Callum]

Please could you try running the installer as admin one last time then send me the latest setup UI log?

[Digas]

You're a star Callum.

I didn't think to keep on trying to download the apps but this time both Designer and Publisher have downloaded perfectly.  However I did notice that the downloads are now 1.8.2 not 1.8.  If I was a conspiracy theorist I would think Serif found there was a problem with 1.8 and within a few days issued a fix.  Of course I didn't have notification of this fix as both apps where not on my computer.  Anyway, thank you so much for replying to my request for help and being concerned enough to ask if all was OK.

 

[SalvoVentura]

Today my 1.8.2 Designer and Photo prompted me to upgrade to 1.8.3. And everything described in this thread happened: the upgrade failed (admin used), the original program has been deleted. I can understand an upgrade failing. But erasing the existing instance is very very bad. I cannot imagine having client deliverables and deadlines, and ending up in this situation... :-(

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, SalvoVentura said:

Today my 1.8.2 Designer and Photo prompted me to upgrade to 1.8.3. And everything described in this thread happened: the upgrade failed (admin used), the original program has been deleted. I can understand an upgrade failing. But erasing the existing instance is very very bad. I cannot imagine having client deliverables and deadlines, and ending up in this situation... 😞

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. Sorry to hear you're having this problem.

Assuming you're also on Windows, the update process is a complete reinstallation of the application, and that requires removing the old version first. If that works, but the installation subsequently fails, you have no verion of the program installed.

These failures are almost always related to issues with Windows and the way the Windows Installer process If you follow the steps listed in the FAQ article about Windows Setup Failures you will probably be successful: https://affin.co/WinSetupFailed

(If you are on Mac, the above does not apply, of course )

[SalvoVentura]

Thank you, Walt.

Happy to report that after a PC reboot, reinstalling both apps from their new installed worked well.

Best,

Salvatore

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome, Salvatore.

[Digas]

Hello,

As per my original post, the new update 1.8.3. failed.  Salvatore beat me to my commenting when his installation failed.  I tried again a few days later as admin.  This too failed.  I tried again just now, as admin and the installation was successful.  I don't want to have to try 3 times over a few days before the install succeeds.  What is happening here?  Surely it must be possible to create a rollback option if the update fails.  Luckily I have Designer on my Mac which I bought after the first failure.  I shouldn't have to do this.  I also cannot believe we are the only two folk this has happened to.   Come on Serif, this is just not good enough.  I've never had so many failures on updates from one company.  In fact I can honestly say that in all the years I've been using computers, updates rarely fail and this includes Microsoft updates.

[walt.farrell]

11 minutes ago, Digas said:

In fact I can honestly say that in all the years I've been using computers, updates rarely fail and this includes Microsoft updates.

The Affinity updates rarely fail for me, but I have had other applications fail to install with details similar to those experienced by users that have had Affinity installation failures.

Basically, the safest way to install a new application or an update on Windows is to restart Windows, then before doing anything else install the new application, running as Administrator.

Restarting Windows ensures that Windows itself isn't in the middle of an update, or that some other application isn't in the middle of an update. And as another user mentioned recently in another thread it ensures that no applications are blocking access to delete (in Affinity's case) the directories the application is installed in. (In that user's case, it seemed that his printer application had a lock of some kind on an Affinity installation directory.)

It seems to be quite difficult to make a bullet-proof installer for Windows, which is weird after this amount of time. But to me it says that Microsoft itself needs to do some work on the installation infrastructure to make it easier for the application developers.

1.8.4 should provide better installation diagnostics for Windows users. The current 1.8.4.647 beta for Photo and Designer and 1.8.4.648 beta for Publisher have the enhanced diagnostics. But Windows 7 users discovered that the code to produce the diagnostics didn't work on Windows 7. So Serif is doing some more work on it for subsequent 1.8.4 betas, I believe.

[Digas]

Hello,

Today, I upgraded all my Affinity software to vers, 1.8.4.

 Designer Failed.  I've been here before so I persevered.  I eventually updated successfully by restarting my computer and running the .exe file as administrator.

Wonderful.  I would now update Publisher but would not be caught out.  I would run as administrator at the get go.  Publisher failed. 

I restarted my computer again ran as admin and this time I was successful. 

Photo would not get me.  I restarted my computer ran the Photo .exe file as admin, waited with baited breath and hey presto it failed! 

I restarted my computer, ran the .exe file as admin and it updated successfully.

The answer was to let each program fail then restart the computer, run as admin and all would be well.   The only thing that caught my eye was that on each initial run of the update, the tick box option for putting a link on the desk top was not there.  It was there after the restart.  Each failure reported not having the necessary permissions. 

I am the only person to use this computer and am set as administrator.  What is going on?  What should be a few minutes update time was multiplied ten fold because of the failures and computer restarts.

Please Serif.  Sort it out.