Installer crashes if there if run in session 0 (e.g. in a scheduled task)

[mpss]

The paint.net installer crashes if run within session 0, e.g. from a scheduled task or psexec -s. Interactive use as system works, e.g. psexec -s -i.

 

To reproduce download the installer and psexec and run:

 

psexec -s paint.net.4.2.9.install.exe

 

This will fail with SetupFrontEnd.exe causing an exception of some sort and crashing. The following will work fine:

 

psexec -s -i paint.net.4.2.9.install.exe

 

Normally this wouldn't be much of a problem because it wouldn't be run that way, but running Chocolatey updates from a scheduled task will fail because of this and there isn't an easy way around that. 

[Rick Brewster]

"An exception of some sort" ? I'd need more details ... what is the exception? As many details as possible. Also, wwhhhhyyyy would you be doing this from Session 0 ...? What's the scenario, in other words.

 

Although, in this case you may just be better off using MSI deployment, https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/UnattendedInstallation.html . I don't know if it'll work but it's worth a try. You'll be responsible for pushing updates though.