I recently stumbled on a small issue with Garmin MapSource, and trying to update to the latest version. I’d previously installed MapSource from DVD, and performed an update. It’s been a while since I’d done it, so I was a few versions off…
This time, when triggering the update program, it saw I needed to upgrade, downloaded the update, and started the install. This is where it went a little bad. MSI installs are smart, in that they can upgrade previous versions, but sometimes aren’t so smart, in the fact they need the previous MSI file to do the update.
This was okay the first time I’d done the update because I had the original MSI file from the DVD. This time it wasn’t so good. The updater downloads the new update, and puts it into a temp folder, and deletes it when done. This means that the MSI update couldn’t find the previous version.
Fortunately, Garmin has a download page for their releases. The naming convention of the files in the downloads is the version of the product. For example, 6.14.1 is named MapSource_6141.exe. Checking the Help | About screen, I was able to identify the version I had previously installed. I changed the version number in the download path, and it got me access to the old version I had previously installed. This got me access to the previous version I needed, and using WinRAR I was able to extract the files to get access to the MSI file I needed.