Upgrade from SolidWorks 2010 SP04 to 2011 SP05 failing via MSI

[localzuk]

We're trying to upgrade our education install of SolidWorks 2010 to the latest version we have. I have upgraded the license server already, and have created the new administrative image per the instructions, and transferred the share to it.

None of the clients 'auto update' as I was told they would, so I have now tried doing a manual upgrade using the msi

msiexec /i "\\server\solidworks\Solidworks 2011 SP05\32bit\SolidWorks\SolidWorks.msi" SWMIGRATE="SolidWorks 2010 SP04" UPGRADEWINSTALL=1

It churns away for a while, a SolidWorks 2011 icon appears on the desktop it says its removing the old version and then after a while it decides to roll back, and warns me that a file couldn't be found to fully restore.

Can anyone give me some clues as to why this is failing and how to fix it? I really don't want to have to go around 60 computers and manually do an install!

[bossman]

@localzuk:

I wouldn't waste my time upgrading the files, instead I would build a new package using the SW wizard and un-install the old package and assign the new. That's what we did and it works first time no problems.

The reason I think that the upgrade doesn't work fully is that there are missing files on the workstations which the upgrade requires to actually upgrade.

[localzuk]

Kinda defeats the point of wanting to upgrade though - as it means we now have to go around and do manual installs on 60 machines, with an installer that takes at best 20 minutes, but normally 40 minutes to do its work.

However, I have just determined that there is another issue for us - our machines have 2GB RAM and Office 2003. SolidWorks 2011 has a minimum requirement of 2GB RAM, meaning it'll be slow with anything slightly complex open, and it requires Office 2007.

So, we have decided not to upgrade until we get round to replacing the machines, and when we do, it'll be a fresh install.

[bossman]

@localzuk:

I do understand what you are saying and I do feel it is a problem with the software, obviously we have a different method of building and deploying the SW package which after the initial wizard build on the SW server we imported the package into our old exported package and then just updated the package itself. We un-installed from the workstations through our deployment agent and then redeployed the new package, in all it took just over 1.5 hours for 30 workstations as this is the one suite we run SW in.

I feel your angst in all of this but that is the nature of our world is it not?