Native Access keeps showing Download Failed when I try to update Traktor Pro to 4.2

LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/225624#Comment_225624

Well… if “users help assistance & solution” would get paid like this… get in the line… many people here who have done it many, many, MANY more times (and lost many, many, MANY more days) are standing before you 😏

BIF

This seems way way off to me. So I decided to do a "reinstall" of a product with a fairly large size (40s Very Own Keys, 3.2 GB). I picked that one so that I could have time to find the disk activity in Windows Resource Monitor while the download phase was running, even though I have very fast internet where I live.

Plus, my files are all on different disk partitions, so I should be able to see the activity changes between the download and install phases that NA goes through.

My download folder is on my "H" drive, so I should have seen "H:\Native Instruments\Temp Downloads" should have been getting a whole bunch of writes. I also opened a file explorer window to that location, and I confirmed that NA was indeed pointing at that folder for the downloads.

I also confirmed the location of the library, which is directed to K:\Native Instruments". NA appends "\40s Very Own Keys" for the main folder name for that library product.

Everything was all set, so I hit the "Reinstall" button in Native Access.

The download ran for a couple of minutes. Resource Monitor only showed access to a bunch of C: locations. No writes were being done to H:, and when the download finished, the install took about 30 seconds, which would have been just about the right amount of time for my computer to transfer about 3.2 GB from one SSD location to another.

But amazingly enough, during said "install phase", I saw no reads coming from H: and no writes going to K:.

In File Explorer, I saw no traces of anything in the download folder during the download phase, and no evidence of files being updated in the aforementioned K: location, and no new file date/timestamps having today's date. Everything is still dated 2022 and 2023 as before for 40s Very Own Keys.

So the $64,000 question now is … what the hell is Native Access doing, and where is it writing all this data to and from, if it's not using the folders I've indicated in the NA "Preferences" dialog?

It just occurred to me to try an "uninstall" and "install" of that same library, just for grins and giggles…and see if the preferenced locations get written to as expected. I'll post again when I have findings.

BIF

Update:

I uninstalled 40s Very Own Keys and because the library folder didn't get deleted off my K partition, I renamed it.

Then I refreshed NA and it came back with the button for 40s Very Own Keys saying "Install". So I hit the button.

Watching in Native Access, I could see dozens (I mean dozens and dozens!) of tasks kick off and write to K partition. Nothing seemed to write anything to the download folder on H partition.s

With my very fast ISP speeds, the download and install together took only about 30 seconds total this time.

I noticed that the new library name has the word "Library" appended after the product name, and all the folders and files have today's date.

So I've learned some things about NA that I didn't know.

1. The data gets downloaded, but you don't always know where.
2. Or maybe NA is doing some kind of "comparison" between the download package and what's already on my hard drive?
3. But when installing "fresh", the download folder is not necessarily used.
4. Some products can just get downloaded straight to the library folder…or at least this one I picked did that.
5. The only way to be assured that the files ACTUALLY come in "fresh" is to remove the library via add/remove programs function AND to delete the folders in the library location. At that point, NA will be forced to write the files new, with the current date.

And one conclusion:

Even though I have no idea where all this stuff gets written to (and under what conditions), I'm still going to do my best to keep my file locations sensible in the preferences settings. It's already chaotic enough, and there's no reason for me to make it even worse with my own bad naming conventions!

Additional thoughts:

I wish I understood all these installer "portal" applications a bit better. They all do essentially the same thing, they download and install a company's products, and they market additional add-on products, features, or capabilities to the consumer. But even within those parameters, NA is different from the old Native Instruments Software Center, and that's different from the Steinberg downloader, which is different from Heavyocity's portal, which is different from the old Izotope portal, which is different from Arturia's portal, and so on. This aspect of the software industry is fascinating to me. Everybody's got their own downloader middleware. I probably should have learned how to write these types of applications back in 2004, lol!

LostInFoundation

If I should choose a word to describe Native Access in the last 2-3 years… I would choose “MYSTERY”.

What I’m afraid of is that it is a mystery even for NI itself…