You can never be too careful... (An Installer WTF)



  • I think we've all dealt with application installers which insist on a reboot after installation, just in case, even though the app seems to work fine without one.  And we've all read the standard disclaimer that "all open applications should be closed before initiating/continuing installation" of an app.

    I happen to think the installer for MS .NET 3.5 SP1 takes this philosophy a bit too far:

    Pressing "retry" didn't help.  In fact, when I had other applications open (e.g. gimp, mspaint, firefox), the installer listed every single one of them in the list of apps to close.  I'm pretty sure none of those apps runs on .NET, and neither does the installer itself.  Talk about covering all the bases....



  • It also shouldn't tell you to disconnect from the internet -- after all, that would kill your porn gigatorrent downloads. (The net, just for downloading software kits and patches? HA!)



  • @Wolftaur said:

    It also shouldn't tell you to disconnect from the internet -- after all, that would kill your porn gigatorrent downloads. (The net, just for downloading software kits and patches? HA!)
     

    you [b]can[/b] disconnect from the internet. It's for all of those poor dail-up developers out there (<0.1% m'thinks)



  • @dtech said:

    you can disconnect from the internet. It's for all of those poor
    dail-up developers out there (<0.1% m'thinks)

    I don't quite envision a dial-up user using the web installer of .NET Framework 3.5.



  • @CodeSimian said:

    Pressing "retry" didn't help.  In fact, when I had other applications open (e.g. gimp, mspaint, firefox), the installer listed every single one of them in the list of apps to close.  I'm pretty sure none of those apps runs on .NET, and neither does the installer itself.  Talk about covering all the bases....

    Maybe try clicking ignore.



  • @samanddeanus said:

    Maybe try clicking ignore.
     

    Uh, thanks?  I already did that, and it worked.  Kind of beside the point, isn't it?  It's catch-all warnings and error messages like that which condition many users to ignore all warnings and errors.  If I had a dollar for every time a colleague complained about some application/OS issue that could've been resolved by actually reading an error message....  If the majority of error/warning messages actually contained useful or relevant information, maybe people would actually pay attention to them.



  •  To be clear, the WTF as I see it is not "OMG I'M TOO STUPID TO PRESS IGNORE AND COMPLETE THE INSTALLATION OF .NET FRAMEWORK!!!!".  The WTF is that the installer is spitting out a ludicrously useless warning message.



  • THey're usually able to recognize itself.

     So my wild guess is that some crappy piece of AnTiSpyWaRe is messing things up.

     



  • @alegr said:

    THey're usually able to recognize itself.

     So my wild guess is that some crappy piece of AnTiSpyWaRe is messing things up.

     

    Well, I am running Windows Defender on the XP box from the OP.  On the other hand, I used the same installer on Vista (with Windows Defender running by default), and I didn't have that problem - it didn't ask me to close anything, let alone the installer itself.

    So yeah, I do think there might be something unique about that box which is causing the "WTF".  In all fairness, maybe the OP didn't merit a WTF, given that it doesn't happen in every situation; most people will probably never see this behaviour.



  • @CodeSimian said:

    In all fairness, maybe the OP didn't merit a WTF, given that it doesn't happen in every situation; most people will probably never see this behaviour.

    Every time I've installed the .Net 3.5 framework I've had the "you may now disconnect from the internet" message and have almost automatically clicked Cancel.  Always managed to stop myself in time because wait, that would cancel the installation wouldn't it?



  • @dtech said:

    @Wolftaur said:
    It also shouldn't tell you to disconnect from the internet -- after all, that would kill your porn gigatorrent downloads. (The net, just for downloading software kits and patches? HA!)
     

    you can disconnect from the internet. It's for all of those poor dail-up developers out there (<0.1% m'thinks)

    NB: it still says the part about disconnecting even if you were not connected to the internet for the entire installation (having downloaded everything in advance)



  •  uh, did you try clicking "Ignore"? 

     



  • @jeffg said:

    uh, did you try clicking "Ignore"?




  • @CodeSimian said:

    I happen to think the installer for MS .NET 3.5 SP1 takes this philosophy a bit too far:

    We've done this one(*) before, when .NET 3.5 first came out:

    http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/8347/157812.aspx

    ... so I guess this is SP1 to that post?

     

    (*) - More than once, actually:

    http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/9224/172506.aspx 

    and there have been many others that I can't dig up owing to the way the search function on the site doesn't search the text of dialog box captions in pictures in the Error'd series...

     



  • @DaveK said:

    We've done this one(*) before
     

    Oops, my bad.  Sorry folks.



  • @DaveK said:

    We've done this one(*) before, when .NET 3.5 first came out:

    ... so I guess this is SP1 to that post?

     

    (*) - More than once, actually:

     

    and there have been many others that I can't dig up owing to the way the search function on the site doesn't search the text of dialog box captions in pictures in the Error'd series...

    Jeez how many of these are there on this forum??

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