Update.exe is missing

[joaomoreno]

From a VSCode user

I ran into this problem several times before tracking it down. Here's the sequence:

• Uninstall VSCode
• Without rebooting, install VSCode

Result: Everything seems fine. VSCode runs OK.
Sometime later reboot your machine.
Result: Update.exe gets deleted and you'll get the error:
'"C:\Users\Bret\AppData\Local\Code\bin..\Update.exe"' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
Note that that other files are still there. Just this one is gone.
That's problem # 1.

How does one get out of this situation? I attempted before, multiple times, by trying once again to reinstall VSCode. But at this point uninstalling VSCode fails completely (it just does nothing if you attempt to uninstall, while Update.exe is gone).
That's problem # 2.

The only way I could get it to reinstall before is by installing new, then uninstalling, the installing again. > That seemed to work for a while. But then the problem just repeated itself after the next reboot.

[marwanhilmi]

I am noticing this happen on some user's systems as well - it appears for whatever reason after a reboot, Update.exe disappears and desktop shortcuts pointing to it break. Is there any reason for Update.exe to just disappear - perhaps getting swept up by Windows Defender or something? I asked users to check their AV logs but it never appears to find/flag Update.exe, it simply disappears.

Any ideas - have you seen this behavior @paulcbetts ?

[anaisbetts]

We've heard a few reports of this too and have never been able to track down why :(

[ionoy]

Same problem here.
Created clean Windows 7 SP1 virtual machine and installed my app. After the reboot Update.exe is missing.

[thughes]

Just chiming in that I saw this once on a Windows 10 virtual machine after rebooting. The Update.exe file actually existed, but it was zero bytes.

[Thieum]

👍 Happened to some of my users too on Windows 7 x86 - updates on network share. Nothing appears in antivirus.

[wballet]

Hi @paulcbetts

I think this explains the mysterious disappearance of our update.exe. After I uninstall my application, the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc960241.aspx) contains the following entries:

...
\??\C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\<app>\Update.exe

\??\C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\<app>

...

The entries in this registry key are renamed after rebooting, but an empty line after an entry will delete that entry.

Now, if I uninstall my application and subsequently reinstall it, these entries are not cleaned up and will effectively remove the update.exe on the next reboot.

Hope this helps...

[UVLabs]

Yep...gets deleted...scared to go into production

[juturu]

@paulcbetts, following is one scenario where i hit this bug.

Scenario:

1. Install the app
2. Uninstall the app in such a way uninstall fails with following errors
   2015-10-14 09:53:39> Utility: safeDeleteFileAtNextReboot: failed - %localappdata%\Foo\Update.exe - 5
   2015-10-14 09:53:39> Utility: safeDeleteFileAtNextReboot: failed - %localappdata%\Foo\app-0.x.x\content_resources_200_percent.pak - 5
3. Install the app again
4. Restart the machine

You will hit update.exe missing and the files for which safeDeleteFileAtNextReboot failed.
So, on reinstall of the app (step 3) we should undo the file deletion on next reboot.

[anaisbetts]

Yeah, so, it sounds like if users incorrectly run Setup.exe as an Elevated UAC account, we'll end up actually succeeding at the MoveFile call, which causes Problems

[anaisbetts]

This is fixed in #466 by removing the MoveFile call

[mgnslndh]

I've seen this issue with a missing update.exe using <package id="squirrel.windows" version="1.4.0" />

This was in production so I'm guessing the machine has not been rebooted since uninstall/install during last deployment, until today.