Installation error - "An installation is already running"

[RayvenRayge]

So I tried to update PDN about a week or so ago. Something failed (I forget what) and the install wasn't completed. I went back to the website and downloaded the installer to reacquire the software. The installation continuously failed, so I wound up deleting the installer and downloaded a fresh copy. I still keep getting the same error every time. It'll get most of the way done, then suddenly pop up an error stating that "Another installation is already running. Finish it first before diong this installation." Does anyone know a way to fix this? For the record, I am running Win10 on my pc. Dunno if that makes a difference. I included a photo of the error message itself.

[Rick Brewster]

You probably have some Windows Updates that are installing in the background.

[RayvenRayge]

Any idea how to get Win10 to check for updates manually?

[Rick Brewster]

Same as always ... just go to the Windows Update control panel and click the button that says "Check for Updates"

[agl7]

Hello, I have exactly the same issue. I've just built a brand-new PC running on Windows 10 and I'm trying to install Paint.net (which worked fine on my old Vista laptop) and it keeps telling me there's another ongoing installation. There are no ongoing windows updates and I'm up to date, and I've restarted the computer half a dozen times. I'm not sure if it's worth me making a separate post for what appears to be the same problem, but I will do that if that's easier for you

 

EDIT: Oh man, I just created this account and it must have pulled that photo from my email account. That is an old photo

Edited September 19, 2015 by agl7

[virenicus]

I am also having this exact same problem on a fresh installation of Windows 10.

[david.atwell]

I think the fresh install is the problem.  After you install Windows 10, it begins installing more updates in the background, even if you haven't told it to.  Wait a little bit and try again.

[eleonora]

Similar thing happens to me in Windows 10. It asked me to update to 4.0.6, so I said yes, then sits there forever (over half an hour) about 9 tenths of the way through, and just does not finish. See attached screenshot.  

I looked in the folder and there are 58 items. The folder Resources has several language sub-folders with varying number of files in each. The folders Effects, FileTypes and Shapes all have nothing in them. With me it doesn't even give an error message, just sits there. I am going to wait a bit longer till it has done nothing for an hour, then I will kill it with Task Manager. But HELP please as I need to get this working!

[Rick Brewster]

See attached screenshot.

 

I don't see an attached screenshot

[eleonora]

I added an attachment​. Don't know what happened to it. I will try and paste it into here. It does not let me paste it into the text. What I did was, clicked on more options. Clicked on Attach Files, Browse. Picked the jpg, Then on Attach this file (I may have missed that last step first time round). Hope you see it now.

By the way, after waiting for over an hour, I killed the install with Task Manager and managed to open Paint.net and use it. However, that is what happened two weeks ago. Today, not having used it in the intervening time, It was all gone, disappeared! Looked in the folder and all there was there was the Staging folder.

 

 

 

[ACMC]

I'm having the same issue as eleonora. Please advise.

[eleonora]

It's me again. After closing windows down yesterday and starting up again today, guess what? Paint,net disappeared again!

 

Can I install the previous version (that is 4.0.5)? I googled and found it on a website oldapps.com. Is it OK to do that? Of course it does not mention Win10 as it is old.

 

If nobody has any better ideas I think I might try that and see what happens.

[eleonora]

Here is some more information. 4.0.5 did NOT work, that is, the same thing happened. Installed, hung, killed it, restarted Windows, gone!

 

So, I tried again with 4.0.6, but this time, instead of Express Install, I tried with Custom Install and got a bit further, still unsuccessful, bit a bit further. This may help for you (the kind developers) to work out what is happening.

 

It got past the first stage (i.e. the one where it hung on the installing dialog) and got to the "Optimizing paint.net's performance... This may take a minute" dialog (see screenshot number 2), then it took a FEW minutes (not just one) to get to screenshot number 3) and sat there for an hour.

 

Whilst all this was happening I looked in Task Manager. With the previous attempts choosing Express Install, Windows Installer and Windows Installer (32 bit) were left running after killing paint.net's setup. However on this latest attempt they were not. Any help?

 

[Rick Brewster]

At that part of the installer it's running something called NGEN, so you'll probably have some instances of ngen.exe and/or mscorsvw.exe in Task Manager. Look at your total CPU usage in the Performance tab. If it's very very low (<5%) then something has deadlocked (which is bad). Otherwise, the gears are still turning.

 

It's better to let them finish, but technically you could kill them in Task Manager and Paint.NET won't be hurt. It will affect startup performance of Paint.NET.

 

But ultimately this is a problem that is probably happening because you've got a fresh Windows 10 upgrade and you're just a victim of an unfortunate collision of circumstances. Upgrading the OS will invalidate (delete) the entire NGEN cache. Usually this is automatically rebuilt at some time when the system is idle; within a day or two IIRC. However, if you run the Paint.NET installer right after an OS upgrade then you will have to wait for the NGEN cache to be rebuilt almost entirely from scratch while you wait: this includes not just the Paint.NET binaries (DLLs and EXE), but everything else on the system that uses NGEN.

 

I don't know what type of system you have, so I don't know how long this should take for you. I've seen NGEN-from-scratch take anywhere from 10 minutes on an average system to almost 2 hours on a low-end Atom (which could barely run Windows anyway).

 

4.0.5 versus 4.0.6 won't affect any of this. Nothing has changed with respect to this part of installation. I strongly recommend against wrestling with different versions of Paint.NET, or hacking away at registry entries, etc., because you're much more likely to end up with a completely broken Paint.NET that can't run, update, install, or even uninstall.

[Fiedman]

I am having the same problems as a lot of other people on here are having, I updated my machine to windows 10 a month and a half ago, I have tried everything posted here to try to help me but nothing has worked is there anything else I can try? if you need to know my system specs:  I am running Windows 10 pro, Intel Pentium CPU G3220 @ 3.00 GHz, 4GB RAM, 64-bit Operating system

[ACMC]

Okay...I left the installation of Paint.net running overnight.  10 hours later the progress window is still open and "progressing" and contains the message:  "Optimizing Paint.net's performance for your stystem. This may take a minute."

 

If you need it, my system specs are:  Windows 10 Home, Intel Pentium CPU G2030 @ 3.00 GHz, 4GB RAM, 64-bit Operating system.

 

Any clue as to why Paint.net will not download anymore?

[Rick Brewster]

Any clue as to why Paint.net will not download anymore?

 

^^^ See my posts above.

[eleonora]

Hello again. Thanks for the post Rick. I've been away a couple of days. Back now for two and then away again.

 

Did some more digging. Can find no reference to NGEN - ngen.exe or mscorsvw.exe in task manager when running the install.

 

My sysem is Intel Core i3-2375M CPU 1.50 GHx, with 8GHZ RAM, running Win 10 home.

 

When it appears do go into "oblivion mode" (that is what I call it when the progress bar stops progressing

) I did notice in task manager the .NET framework optimization process was using quite a bit of CPU (can't remember the percentage) and then stops altogether and is no longer listed. After that, nothing happens. Other tasks are using CPU as would be expected, but the installer, nothing.

 

This seems to narrow it down to the .NET optimization service. Does it help you to find out what is going wrong?

[Rick Brewster]

Does it help you to find out what is going wrong?

 

Hmm, not really, unfortunately. You could use something like Process Explorer ( https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) to see the child processes of SetupFrontEnd.exe.

 

But, at this point, if it's hanging and you already gave it plenty of time (like at least 30 minutes) ... then just tell Task Manager to kill SetupFrontEnd.exe. Paint.NET should still work fine.

[eleonora]

Yes, Paint.NET does still work fine, but only till I close Windows. Remember my first post (Posted 04 October 2015 - 05:46 PM) explained that, after I close Windows and start up again, all the files and folders in paint.net have disappeared (that is, all except for the staging files).

 

So the, I have to install all over again, and kill the setup before I can use PDN

[eleonora]

I have found the solution to my problem!

 

MOD NOTE: Do not do this!  See Rick's explanation below.  You will likely break Paint.NET.

 

So, after posting my latest reply at 5.26 pm just above here I had a brainwave. I said "the only files left were the Staging files", so I thought they must be the culprits. I deleted them before exiting Windows. On re-starting, lo and behold, PDN is still there. The first thing I noticed the icon on the desktop was unchanged.

 

Then, whoever is having the same problem I suggest the following: Run the install until it stops doing anything. Give it a few more minutes  (maybe check in Task Manager that it is no longer using up any CPU), then using Task Manager end task (on the setup, of course). Before closing windows go to

C:\Program Files\Paint.net (or wherever you chose to install it) and you will see files and folders. Select the folder named Staging and delete it. It will say you need admin rights to delete, so you must have them.

 

Good luck....

[Rick Brewster]

DO NOT DELETE THE STAGING FOLDER. (or anything in it)

 

You've just broken the updater.

 

Remember, I said please don't go deleting registry entries and files and stuff. You will end up with a broken Paint.NET installation.

[eleonora]

So, tell me what should I do?

 

Also, please do not shoult at me. it is most unhelpful.

[Rick Brewster]

I'm not trying to shout at you, just trying to emphasize because it's really important. And because I don't want someone else to come along this thread and follow the advice you gave just now.

 

I'm not sure what you should do at this point. You'd have to tell the installer to spit out the MSI and then manually place it back into the Staging folder with the correct name. There's a post somewhere ... someone did that and it worked for them at some point, bit it eludes me right now.

[null54]

There's a post somewhere ... someone did that and it worked for them at some point, bit it eludes me right now.

That may be this post:

 

Renaming existing files only works if the version of the installer is the same as the installed version. You can hover your mouse over the file in Windows Explorer and, if you have tooltips enabled in Explorer, you can see the version it would install. Simply downloading the missing Installer for your current version and extracting the MSI, and renaming the extracted file will work.

How to update Paint.NET when asked for a Staging MSI:

• Find out the version that is installed. - Mine is version 3.5.5
• Go to File Hippo and download your current version.
• You need to unpack the MSI from the downloaded EXE... run from a cmd.exe window (or Start Run):

  Paint.NET.3.5.5.Install.exe /createMsi CHECKFORBETAS=0 DESKTOPSHORTCUT=0

• Open the folder created on your desktop, PaintDotNetMsi, and rename the file PaintDotNet.x86.msi to PaintDotNet_753582080.msi or whatever filename Windows Installer is asking for.
• Copy the MSI to C:\Program Files\Paint.NET\Staging
• Re-run the Paint.NET update - or uninstaller.

Note that you will have to use the x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) MSI depending on your OS.