GP 6.3.3 Not uninstalling old versions

[TomCole]

We have had multiple Windows users where the installation of 6.3.3 does not uninstall the old GP version.  This causes an upgrade loop for the users.  This is both for Transparent and manual installations.  The only fix we have identified is to completely uninstall the old version and then install the new.  The issue with this is that most of our users are not Power Users on Windows.

[JosePonce]

Good to know, we are about to deploy 6.3.3, glad I saw this post. Maybe we need to create a script to un-install and install new version, but its more work for us. PA is getting bad with this, support even worse. 

[BPry]

@TomCole,

Can you confirm that you're actually seeing two versions of GlobalProtect actively installed and not just a failing upgrade? I've personally never seen GlobalProtect install two versions of the agent at the same time (minus having multiple installations like the Win64 agent and the Windows Store application). 

If you're just seeing an endless upgrade loop and the actual upgrade process is failing, that is sadly something that I find to be very common. If you have your agent upgrade process set to be transparent, it's also something that is harder to identify as a user to report unless you're actively looking at connected versions on the firewall or some other utility.

A lot of people will utilize deployment tools like SCCM or Intune due to these upgrade challenges. Personally I like to leave them on the firewall and simply utilize HIP checks to denote when a user is N+1 versions behind so that they can get things corrected, and then block anything that is older from connecting to resources and force the user to upgrade. 

[TomCole]

I can confirm that we see two versions installed.  One version is the pre-upgrade version, and the new one is 6.3.3.  But 6.3.3 is not properly installed because it is still running the 6.2.8 app, causing the loop.  My IT guys want to use InTune for this and there is a command line that forces the uninstall of the old version that can be run before the install.

[TomCole]

Working with Premium support, we were able to identify the issue.   The installer/uninstaller is looking for .NET 2 and 3.  On our machines, it was NOT installed.  I uninstalled GP, installed .NET Framework 3.5, installed GP 6.2.8, and connected.  When I connected, the upgrade happened with zero issues.  I verified that GP 6.2.8 was completely uninstalled.