click-once deployment "auto-update" feature glitch

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Guest

I have an application that I've used click-once deployment to publish out to
a shared network path. From there I installed the app on a few client
machines, including my own. Since then I published a few updates that were
recognized by the app, and the users installed them, so everyone's on the
most current version. A couple of glitches are now showing up.

1. One of my users received a prompt when she opened up the app that there
is a new version available. I verified that she's on the most current
version, so I'm clueless as to why it would say that she's not.

2. Another user gets a prompt every morning when she logs on to the network
and opens the application. Her prompt tells her that the application isn't
even installed on her machine, which truly boggles me. I don't know where to
even start on this one. She has to go through the install, then isn't
bothered again until the next time she logs off and then back on.

Any ideas where I can begin to dig into these issues?
 
I fell upon the answer to this problem while reading this blog:

http://blog.ziffdavis.com/devlife/archive/2006/05/28/41839.aspx

Basically, my users were copying the shortcut from the programs list
and pasting it to their desktop. Unbeknownst to me, the target for this
shortcut is updated every time the clickonce installer updates the
user's application reference. So what was happening was that the
shortcut on their desktop no longer coincided with the shortcut in the
programs list.

In the case of my first user, she set up her desktop shortcut after
version 11. After I published version 12, her desktop shortcut pointed
to an older reference, which (accurately) told her that there's a new
version out there that she should install.

My second user was a little more perplexing, since her shortcut told
her that she didn't even have the application installed. She had set up
her desktop shortcut on version 10. After I published version 12, her
desktop shortcut pointed to a non-existing reference and (accurately
again) told her that [version 10 of] the application was not installed.
This is because only the last 2 versions are stored on the client's PC.
All older versions are automatically deleted. By the way, if you didn't
already know, you can "roll-back" a click-once update, but you can only
roll it back once since only the current and previous versions are kept
on the PC.

In order to fix these problems, I followed the instructions in the
above blog to create a desktop shortcut each and every time the
application is run. I changed it up a little though by not checking if
the shortcut already exists, but simply creating it anyway. This way,
if it does already exist, it is overwritten with the new target path.

Just thought I'd share this with everyone since I'm sure it's bound to
happen to you at some point. Now you shouldn't have to scratch your
head for weeks like I did.
 
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