ClickOnce applications re-downloading

0
votes

We are facing an issue with our ClickOnce applications re-downloading, even when there is no new version of the software published. The issue seems to be intermittent, but not reliably repeatable. There are multiple applications written in VB.NET that are published via ClickOnce and hosted on a network share. The clients have shortcuts on their PCs that point to each software. Sometimes they can switch between launching each application without issue, and other times, they are prompted to download the software. I'm checking the Event Viewer and see no errors being reported when they are being prompted.

Following a few other threads, I've tried enabling the group policy for 'Do not forcefully unload the user registry at user logoff’. The issue still popped-up after this.

The PCs are running Windows 10. The applications do share some of the same .dll packages (DevExpress, and a few others). We have been publishing ClickOnce for years and didn't start encountering this issue until approximately 6-8 months ago. The user complaints have been increasing and I am unsure of what to do to resolve the issue.

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.netvb.netclickonce
Is ClickOnce vital to you? - Caius Jard
Maybe. It's how we have always deployed our applications. But, if there is no solid solution to be found, then I would say it's certainly possible that we would explore other options. - Evan09
As a follow up - I've been monitoring the 2.0/Data/* folders.I'm seeing that sometimes when a new app is downloaded, it removes other apps folders. Sometimes it is removing ALL existing application data folders, and other times it is removing only some application data folders. - Evan09
As in, it removes folders that it doesn't own/aren't related to it? - Caius Jard
Yes, so under 2.0/Data, each click once app has it's own folder when installed. I'm seeing that when clickonce is installing, those other folders are being removed. - Evan09

1 Answers

1
votes

Answer found! The issue is with ClickOnce limiting the amount of space online deployed apps can take up. Apparently there is a default space limit of 250 MB. Our apps can be a bit bulky with some of the libraries they use, so the sum of the data cache was exceeding the default. We had to create the registry value for HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Deployment\OnlineAppQuotaInKB and increase the size. After setting it to 1GB, we stopped having the issue.

Info about the ClickOnce cache: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/deployment/clickonce-cache-overview?view=vs-2019