Today I decided to upgrade RC2 to RC3. But I hope for everyone that the installer is not the final one. It looks as though a LOT of work is needed to get it stable. And it should, because the installer is the very first impression and users might see it as an indication for the application itself.
I had to go through the installer five times.
1) There was a crash just before the installation overview was displayed. Appearantly I still have to use Microsoft's firewall or else I'm doomed.
2) Then there was another crash. The installer wanted to uninstall RC2 which was unable to write mp-uninstall.exe because it already existed. This, I know, is VERY easy to fix.
3) Then (when I emptied the temp dir) the same uninstaller complained about the temp dir being not accessible. That's just not true.
4) Finally, when I had uninstalled MP RC2 manually, the RC3 installer had yet another complaint. I needed to manually download a WMP11 file from microsoft.com. WTH is that about? I want to decide which codecs I use, not MP.
5) Reboot was totally neccesary. Otherwise my box would go up in smoke or something. That WMP thing was very persistent about that reboot. After that the RC3 installer worked.
But wait! I'm not finished yet. After installation, EVERYTHING was back to "factory defaults". And I mean everything. The TV sever had forgotten every channel, and the settings along with em. MediaPortal config was back to square one completely, even the skin was back to it's ugly default (No really, it looks horrible).
Luckily though, I had madebackup of the config, so I just lazily copy-pasted them back. Appearantly I had to "reinstall" the exact same skin in order to make a scary red warning go away (after which MP really did crash). But then everything seemed back to normal.
So for the sake of professionality, for the sake of frustration (or rather, for the sake of preventing it). Please make an installer that JUST WORKS. No crashes that the average user can deal with, no difficult questions to bother the user with, certainly don't request the user to do something manually (a real show-stopper if this was my very first MP experience, which it wasn't). And come on guys, it's 2008, upgrade those settings rather than forcing them back to defaults (yes, that last part really is the Greatest Frustration that I have had all day).
So, uhm, do with this information what you think is appropriate, but for your (and our) sake, I hope you fix those issues. You really need to for the final version.
One last thing, I'm not looking for answers that explain *why* so many things go wrong. I don't really care about that (no offense). I just want it to work.
I had to go through the installer five times.
1) There was a crash just before the installation overview was displayed. Appearantly I still have to use Microsoft's firewall or else I'm doomed.
2) Then there was another crash. The installer wanted to uninstall RC2 which was unable to write mp-uninstall.exe because it already existed. This, I know, is VERY easy to fix.
3) Then (when I emptied the temp dir) the same uninstaller complained about the temp dir being not accessible. That's just not true.
4) Finally, when I had uninstalled MP RC2 manually, the RC3 installer had yet another complaint. I needed to manually download a WMP11 file from microsoft.com. WTH is that about? I want to decide which codecs I use, not MP.
5) Reboot was totally neccesary. Otherwise my box would go up in smoke or something. That WMP thing was very persistent about that reboot. After that the RC3 installer worked.
But wait! I'm not finished yet. After installation, EVERYTHING was back to "factory defaults". And I mean everything. The TV sever had forgotten every channel, and the settings along with em. MediaPortal config was back to square one completely, even the skin was back to it's ugly default (No really, it looks horrible).
Luckily though, I had madebackup of the config, so I just lazily copy-pasted them back. Appearantly I had to "reinstall" the exact same skin in order to make a scary red warning go away (after which MP really did crash). But then everything seemed back to normal.
So for the sake of professionality, for the sake of frustration (or rather, for the sake of preventing it). Please make an installer that JUST WORKS. No crashes that the average user can deal with, no difficult questions to bother the user with, certainly don't request the user to do something manually (a real show-stopper if this was my very first MP experience, which it wasn't). And come on guys, it's 2008, upgrade those settings rather than forcing them back to defaults (yes, that last part really is the Greatest Frustration that I have had all day).
So, uhm, do with this information what you think is appropriate, but for your (and our) sake, I hope you fix those issues. You really need to for the final version.
One last thing, I'm not looking for answers that explain *why* so many things go wrong. I don't really care about that (no offense). I just want it to work.
Norway