Check for Updates… / updating the Paratext software

Question

There is no Help topic for this, so I’ll start this thread for myself or anyone else to add helpful comments about the Update system in PT.

At the time of writing, my comments are on PT8.0.

Answer 1

At least two of our users are having problems with updates:

One (remote) user says PT is asking her to update every day. She’s answering Yes, and accepting the UAC prompt, but the next time she starts PT, it asks her to to update again. From PT’s S/R report, I can she that she’s on 8.0.100.71; I think the latest “normal” update is .72, right? (I’m set to β, and I’m at .73).

So it looks like she’s stuck on .71 . How can I unstick her?

It may be unrelated, but she also says that the project and back-translation project she’s working with randomly, and alternately appear as empty windows: she has to restart PT multiple times to get both projects to show.

In the meantime I’m going to advise her to refuse the updates (to help with the first problem) and leave PT open and sleep or hibernate her computer when she’s not working (to help with the second). (Maybe we all should do that, since restarting every day is unnecessary!)

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The other user only connects to the Internet for a few minutes a day, and may not have been on long enough to download an update. Today his PT was at .67, so I downloaded an update, restarted PT, and then saw that it was still at .67 . When I told PT to Check for Updates again, it said his PT was up-to-date!!

What could be causing it to both not update and then report that it’s up-to-date when it’s not?

Comments

wdavidhj:

I think the latest “normal” update is .72, right?

I was thinking: what’s the best way to check what the latest update is? I just went to https://pt8.paratext.org/download/currentversion/ , and .72 is the patch that’s offered there. Can we always trust that what’s listed for download is the latest?

Ans is there a reason why PT’s Check for Updates dialog box doesn’s report the full version number of what it’s downloading or has downloaded? It just says “8.0”, which is really unhelpful!!

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wdavidhj:

Can we always trust that what’s listed for download is the latest?

That should always be the latest version that is given to all users.

wdavidhj:

Ans is there a reason why PT’s Check for Updates dialog box doesn’s report the full version number of what it’s downloading or has downloaded? It just says “8.0”, which is really unhelpful!!

From looking at the code, it looks like it should show the full version. Can you post a screenshot of what you see?

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anon291708:

From looking at the code, it looks like it should show the full version. Can you post a screenshot of what you see?

I guess I can’t until the next update appears … or I find a computer in my office that’s out-of-date.

Answer 2

Note that, in Windows, when you restart Paratext to install an update, you have to say Yes to a UAC prompt (that’s User Account Control, a feature which protects you by seeking approval for most new program installations; the screenshot below is an example of a UAC prompt, i.e. Yes/No question).

In most UAC prompts, the installation program you’re allowing to run has a name that’s self-explanatory, e.g.:

• naps2-5.6.2-setup.exe [for Not Another PDF Scanner];
• npp.7.5.1.Installer.exe [for Notepad++].

But in the case of Paratext updaters, the names are in the style “1a51ad68.msi”, as in the screenshot below. When Windows asks you to run a program with a name like that, you might be worried that it’s a strange program. But the context, that Paratext has told you an update is available, and that you’re restarting Paratext, which is when it does updates, should help you to realise that this is indeed a Paratext updater, and therefore safe.

• 

Comments

Could the names of the updaters not include the words “Paratext” and “update”? This would be more reassuring to users.

To all readers: click to vote for me to submit a feature request for this!

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wdavidhj:

Could the names of the updaters not include the words “Paratext” and “update”? This would be more reassuring to users.

To all readers: click to vote for me to submit a feature request for this!

I’m still wondering why the update MSIs can’t have more friendly names! Can anyone tell me?

With basic users, I would instruct them to only say Yes to a UAC prompt if they recognise the name of the installer that’s . If they were following my instructions, they’d say No to all the PT updates .

Answer 3

When you click Check for Updates…, if it finds an update, it says “Paratext 8.0 is ready to download”.

Why is the version number truncated? It means that the same version number is always shown, which could make some users wonder whether they’re really getting an update or not!

Is this easy to fix?

To all: click to vote for me to submit a feature request on this one!

Answer 4

On my secondary computer, I haven’t used Paratext for a while, and it’s at v8.0.75.1. When I check for updates, it says that the program is up to date. It’s clearly not, so what can I do?

The only thing I’ve tried is setting the Release Stage to Pre-Release, but that made no difference.

Comments

wdavidhj:

It’s clearly not, so what can I do?

Please see the original release notes for the Paratext 8.0 release. You need to install it manually.

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OK, I’ll do that.

I have to say, it would be nice if PT8β would give a message other than “Paratext is up-to-date”! Couldn’t it say “Release version is now available”?

Answer 5

I don’t remember the exact details, but there was a major problem with having the Beta show the “there is a new release” message. I think it had to do with some old legacy code in PT7 that saw the update and did something bad (something like showing a message that there was an update to Paratext, but because it required migration, it was bad for the average user to go through with it).
To work around the issue, we had to “hack” the update file on the server which, unfortunately, caused the Beta to not be able to detect that there was a new version. The update proccess for 8.1 should work as you would expect.

EDIT: The issue mentioned here is what I was remembering.

Answer 6

Recently I’ve been having a problem with the Software Updates infobox that contains the text:

Software updates for Paratext are ready ton install.
Please restart the application at your convenience.
    OK

This box gets displayed every few hours, and multiple copies of it accumulate. Right now I have five copies showing; I think I’ve seen as many as eight in the last month.

It’s a pain to have to close so many infoboxes: surely only one instance should be displayed?

Comments

wdavidhj:

This box gets displayed every few hours, and multiple copies of it accumulate.

This looks like a bug. It looks like Paratext will check for updates every hour whether it has already downloaded an update or not. I’ve written it up.

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Thanks.

Answer 7

Where does PT save the update installer files that it downloads?

[later] OK, found it. When you’re downloading an update, PT tells you the folder that it’s saving it to:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Paratext80\ParatextUpdate

Comments

I’ve seen situations more than once where PT downloads an update, but for some reason it fails to install the next time PT is started. When I Check for Updates again, it re-downloads the update, which presumably means that PT has deleted the previously downloaded file!

I’d have thought that PT would only delete the file when it’s sure the update has happened – is that the case? Do any of you know why the file might have been deleted in my case?

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wdavidhj:

… presumably means that PT has deleted the previously downloaded file!

Well, it turns out that this is not the case: having found the folder, I can now see that the downloaded patch is there.

So why does PT offer to download it again when I Check for Updates, rather than telling me that the file already exists? If this is a bug, I’ll do Report a Problem.

If I restart PT, it does try to update from the existing file (the update fails on the computer I’m working on, but that’s for another post).

Interestingly, when PT tries to download it a second time, there is no apparent progress of the download: it always says:

“0% of 0MB has been downloaded.”

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wdavidhj:

So why does PT offer to download it again when I Check for Updates , rather than telling me that the file already exists? If this is a bug, I’ll do Report a Problem .

Sorry, I marked this thread to give an answer a while ago and forgot about it.

The biggest reason for this is that if it failed to install, then it might mean that the file was corrupted so it just re-downloads just in case. However, I think this could be a little smarter (i.e. it could check the hash of the file to see if it is equal so it could know if it was corrupted) so it’s probably worth a problem report.

Answer 8

wdavidhj:

the update fails on the computer I’m working on, but that’s for another post

That’s the same computer I referred to earlier in this smippet:

wdavidhj:

The other user only connects to the Internet for a few minutes a day, and may not have been on long enough to download an update. Today his PT was at .67, so I downloaded an update, restarted PT, and then saw that it was still at .67 . When I told PT to Check for Updates again, it said his PT was up-to-date!!

The update on this: I have seen the updater run at lease one more time, with no error messages, but, once PT8 has started up, it still reports its version as .67. How can I fix this? If more data is needed, I can do Problem Report from that computer.

Comments

This may have been mentioned before, but I have seen cases where for some reason an update simply won’t run and the update must be run from the appdata… folder.
As has been suggested. Try deleting the existing update file and try the download one more time. If it fails, then either try to manually run the update from that folder, or if the update fails, download the latest update from the pt8.paratext.org downloads and run it manually.

Answer 9

In the Paratext Update Status dialog – the one where you can see the progress of the update – does PT give and acknowledgement to the user when they click Cancel current download?

I tried it just now, and I don’t know whether the download has been cancelled or not.

And, if it is cancelled, is it cancelled for ever? Or, if PT is restarted, will it restart the download of the latest update?

Comments

wdavidhj:

I tried it just now, and I don’t know whether the download has been cancelled or not.

And, if it is cancelled, is it cancelled for ever? Or, if PT is restarted, will it restart the download of the latest update?

It should always be canceled, but is only canceled for that run of Paratext. It will try again when it is restarted.

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OK, that’s helpful.

But it still seems hard to tell whether the download has actually been stopped. When I click Cancel, nothing changes: for example, the animation on the progress bar continues to swipe to the right.

Am I correct that PT does not acknowledge the clicking of Cancel with a message like “Download cancelled”? In some other software, you click a button, you see the animation of the button being pushed down, but the action is not performed; so I like a clear confirmation.