Program installer fails, wants 1809 or greater ... I have 20H2

Telos · 15 Sep 2021

Trying to install a program... shortly after the installer executable launches, a pop-up says that the program requires Windows 1809 or later... Clicking OK closes the installer. I have 20H2 according to winver.

The application developer can't help.

Any ideas what might be triggering the incorrect Windows version... or a means to bypass the version check?

Oddly enough I have v6 of the program installed and running, but need to rollback to v5. After uninstalling v6, rebooting and attempting to install v5, this crazy notice appears.

I'm stumped.

dalchina · 16 Sep 2021

Presumably some bug in the way the older version of the program checks the installed build of the O/S.

That's the program, if so, not Windows...

If you really really needed to run that, you could have build 1809 in a Virtual Machine.. but doubt that's worth the trouble.

Try3 · 16 Sep 2021

Telos said:

... a pop-up says that the program requires Windows 1809 or later ... I have 20H2

After Version 2004, a new Version numbering system was introduced [20H1 rather than 2009] and the developer would have had to alter the method of determining the Version [and which version 'number' was bigger than another].

So I'd guess that the old application version uses a now-invalid method of checking Windows 10 Version number.
- You really would need to know precise details of the method used and the developer is unlikely to tell you that.
- Since you do not know what method is used, you cannot even begin to investigate a workaround.

Albeit at some risk of being overly simplistic, if the Version checking method retrieved the Version 'number' and compared it to 1809 using an alphabet-based sort then 20H1 would always come before 1809.

Program installer fails, wants 1809 or greater ... I have 20H2-numbering.png

Sorry but I agree with you that you are stumped and will not find a solution.

Denis

pepanee · 16 Sep 2021

Have you tried playing around with these settings? Maybe you can find a method here that will allow you to install the app:

Program installer fails, wants 1809 or greater ... I have 20H2-compatibility-settings.png

Telos · 16 Sep 2021

Some very good points made by all. Thank you.
@pepanee ... I did try the "compatibility" setting you mentioned, but still I was unable to bypass the Windows version check.

Berton · 16 Sep 2021

A bit of information, I got a book cataloging program that said it couldn't run from default setup.exe file but in digging into other files found another setup.exe file in a folder that ran fine so it was the install routine that was the problem.

dalchina · 16 Sep 2021

That's an interesting thought- depends very much on the structure of the program's installer as to whether there's some way of installing it without encountering the check.

What's the program, anyway?

Telos · 16 Sep 2021

Berton said:

A bit of information, I got a book cataloging program that said it couldn't run from default setup.exe file but in digging into other files found another setup.exe file in a folder that ran fine so it was the install routine that was the problem.

Interesting, but no other setup file is present. I expanded the exe using 7zip and scanned for version info. All I learned is that the installer is based on Inno Setup. Maybe it is outdated for new versioning scheme.

Berton · 16 Sep 2021

Telos said:

Interesting, but no other setup file is present. I expanded the exe using 7zip and scanned for version info. All I learned is that the installer is based on Inno Setup. Maybe it is outdated for new versioning scheme.

Very possible. Each twice-yearly Version Upgrades does things previous ones didn't even to the point of removing any customizations and killing off things that previously worked, that impacts third-party software programmers.