And so, after a lot of time spent trying to debug reinstall, upgrade and uninstall problems on Windows Mobile 2005, I find out that (tada) it's a Microsoft bug. From:
Pocket PC Thoughts :: View topic - Doing Battle To Uninstall Or Upgrade On Windows Mobile 5:
The problem has been fixed is will be included most device upgrades in queue and also future releases on WM 5.0. If you find yourself running into install/re-install issues, the best thing to do it to soft-reset *prior* to the install operation to ensure you have optimal memory available to perform the operation. You are most likely to see failed installation on device under the following conditions:
- Installation of particularly large CABs
- Re-installation of an application that is already on the device
- Installation when there are a high number of processes currently running
- Devices that have a reduced addressable memory space
So basically there was (once again) insufficient testing before release. Does that sound like a harsh statement? I hit this problem (as did a large number of other people) the very first time I tried to uninstall an application on WM2005. I'm pretty sure someone should have caught this.
I'm at my limit on these mysterious failures that appear in each new WM release (remember the wake up problems from WM2003?) and which end up costing developers and users a vast amount of time and frustration.
This particular bug won't be gone for a while, either, since we have to wait for all of the OEM's to release the fix at some point. Hopefully. In the meantime, I'll probably have to encorporate the kludge (oh, sorry, workaround) suggested here.
