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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.

Evan09
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  • Is ClickOnce vital to you? – Caius Jard Jun 01 '20 at 16:04
  • 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 Jun 01 '20 at 16:10
  • 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 Jun 01 '20 at 18:45
  • As in, it removes folders that it doesn't own/aren't related to it? – Caius Jard Jun 01 '20 at 19:44
  • 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 Jun 01 '20 at 20:30
  • Also, new information. Some developers use different versions of Visual Studio when they publish the ClickOnce applications. I'm wondering if there are differences in ClickOnce between Visual Studio versions that could cause the conflict. – Evan09 Jun 02 '20 at 12:38
  • What is the new-version policy of the CO app? Check on startup, check after startup or check via dedicated UI? Is one person responsible for all updates or can any dev push any update any time they like? – Caius Jard Jun 02 '20 at 14:40
  • Gut feeling, sounds like you've got multiple Devs deploying from multiple machines. My experience regardless of deployment technology I've always found it more straight forward to Have a SINGLE machine responsible for building deployments. Maybe since different machines Click Once is seeing it as different versions? – Hursey Jun 03 '20 at 00:38
  • @CaiusJard - I don't believe we specifically set an update/new-version policy. Typically, we only select the "only online" option under the "Publish" tab. But, the apps check for a new version on startup. I'm assuming that's the default. – Evan09 Jun 03 '20 at 15:42
  • @Hursey - Yes, multiple developers from multiple machines. Everyone publishes to a central location, then the QA/UAT access the software from there.I will bring this suggestion up to our team, and I will dig further into it to see if that could be the underlying issue here. Thank you. – Evan09 Jun 03 '20 at 15:46

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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://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/deployment/clickonce-cache-overview?view=vs-2019

Evan09
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