Error Message when rolling back to older CVB

Hi All,

I have recently installed CVB 13.01.001 and have been using it for a project. I needed to roll back to CVB 12.01.003 for testing and found that I got an error during installation. “The file ‘siNetFilter.sys’ on siNetFilter GigE Filter Driver is needed”.
007

I have tested this on two machines by installing then uninstalling CVB 13.01.001 and then trying to install CVB 12.01.003 or 007.
When uninstalling 13.01.001 I have deleted all files within Program Files and Program Data, and I have also deleted anything CVB related in the registry. I have also removed Sherlock, CVB for Sherlock Driver and any Codemeter software just in case that was causing a conflict… Same results every time.

I am about to try this on a third machine but wanted to post here before the end of the day.

Can someone please confirm that they see the same problem?

Hi @Prian

what you’re seeing there has nothing to do with rolling back to an older version of :cvb: - instead it is all about directories. The same thing will also happen if you install for example version 13.01.002 to e.g. C:\cvb13, then uninstall it and then install the very same version again, but this time e.g. to C:\cvb1301002.

The :cvb: installer is a regular MSI package that is installed through msiexec. The sinetfilter.sys, however (and in older days the sifilterip.sys) is a system level driver (more precisely a network filter driver) that is not installed directly by msiexec but through an invocation of DPInst which basically parses the sinetfilter.inf file that comes with the driver and acts according to what it finds in there (of course not without first verifying the digital signature that is embedded along with a hash of the package’s file in the sinetfilter.cat file).

As far as I understood it, the operating system memorizes the location from where a driver was installed first, so if you first install to C:\cvb13, then DPInst will have installed the sinetfilter.sys bundle from C:\cvb13\Hardware\StemmerImaging\siNetFilter. Now you remove this folder by uninstalling, then install to C:\cvb1301002. DPInst will now be called from C:\cvb1301002\Hardware\StemmerImaging\siNetFilter, from where it could directly install the sinetfilter.sys bundle because it is located in that very same directory. However for reasons unknown to me DPInst tries to install the bundle from where it last found it (in our example C:\cvb13\Hardware\StemmerImaging\siNetFilter, the folder that the edit box next to “Copy files from:” has been initialized with in your case).

I have never found a way around this behavior, which is admittedly a bit frustrating. I would, however, not go as far as calling this a “bug”. Pointing the dialog to the proper (new) location by means of the “Browse” button will immediately lead to a properly installed siNetFilter.sys.

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Hi again, @Prian

having thought about this over the weekend I should probably add that in the step 13.0 to 13.1 the major version does in fact play a role - because it induces a change in the location of siNetFilter.sys (this is because we now need to differently signed versions - one for Win7 and one for Win10…).