BeAware of LimeWire UnInstall...

I've been a LW user for quite some time... at least since v1.6... Never had a problem with an LW install before today... I had been running 2.2.1 Pro.

Today I Dl'ed the 2.3.0 Pro Beta. I got an unexpected error during install, a WIN NT Dr. Watson issue with IDRIVE.EXE. Install failed, in the middle. Things were amuck...

So I went to officially UNInstalled (CPanel Add/Remove) LW 2.2.1, and was SURPRISED to see that it: DELETED all directories and files under it's root, including all Shared FILES, and any Directories you mave have created for whatever purpose, such as my ORG directory where I neatly kept my LW EXE versions and notes.

It is real BAD that LW UNInstall DELETED Files and Folders that it did not create. This is BAD Installation Etiquette !

Come'on LW, this is Kindergarden 101 stuff.

Man , Is the LW Installer really that stupid ?
What did they use in their compiler as uninstaller ?
A wildchart ? (the *)

This would never happen with the Clean LimeWire installer .
Made sure of that with the first release .
It will also delete your shared folder but only when it's empty !

Can you tell me more about the Clean Limewire?
I recall checking it out a few weeks ago, at http://www.geocities.com/burk017/
but it seems to be gone now.

Is CLW up to date with 2.3.0 ?
Does it do anything beyond the 2.3.0 Pro version?

We dont have a 2.3.0 yet , but a 2.2.0 for Windows is ready for download here if you want it :
http://users.pandora.be/karel.boonen...s/LimeWire.exe

For some reason they deleted our GeoCities account .
So we moved to a new server , wich also died .

John-

That is definitely strange behavior. The uninstaller does not explicitly delete any shared directories or shared files (verified hundreds of times internally and thousands of times by users). We do make a call to delete the directory, but only if it's empty. It is possible that there's a bug on NT with InstallShield's DeleteDir function, but that seems unlikely. It's also possible that IS was brought into an inconsistent state with the other installation attempt.

We have, of course, tested this very thoroughly, however, and I assure any other reading this thread that they need not worry about their files being deleted. Were this to happen in the general case, I probably wouldn't have survived to write this e-mail!

This seams certainly related to a bug in iDrive :
- standard Windows (or Unix, or Linux...) filesystems coherently refuse to delete a directory if there's a file within them.
- uninstallers coherently assume this, and try to perform a removal of the directory they created (for example the installation root directory)
- iDrive seams to honor this deletion, regardless of whever there are other files or subfolders in this directory whose deletion wad attempted.

This is a major bug in iDrive, not LimeWire. iDrive is an addon for Windows, and is clearly unsupported,either by Microsoft or by any other tools. Claim your bug to iDrive, and insist on this big security hole in their implementation !

Note that this may also be a limit on the iDrive policy: you may have exceeded your online storage policy, and online storage of copyrighted files may be a reason why they decided to cancel all files in your online account, or they decided to block access to your online files because you did not renew you online account in time, or forgot to pay for your excess storage. iDrive is no more a full Free service, and using it to share files between users may be a breach to their online policy.

So read your user agreement, and then check this bug with them.

Note that on January 16, 2002, iDrive became Anuvio Technologies. The online storage policy has changed, and migration may be in progress, and you may need to sign a new user agreement.

So http://www.idrive.com/ is now :

http://www.anuvio.com/

Check for software updates !