Silverlight Deployment Troubleshooting Guide

After helping a few customers with Silverlight install issues, I think it may be helpful to publish a Silverlight deployment troubleshooting guide and keep it up-to-date, so here you go.

Troubleshooting Steps

• Is Silverlight installed?
  on Windows, make sure “Microsoft Silverlight” is in Control Panel –> Programs and Features:
  
  On Mac, make sure /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Silverlight.plugin is there. If Silverlight isn’t installed, you can install the latest version from http://www.silverlight.net or http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.
  • Do you have administrative privilege on the machine?
    You will need local administrative privilege to install Silverlight.
  • Do you have webshots/kiwee toolbar installed?
    There are known issues with Silverlight and old version of Webshots/Kiwee from American Greetings. The fix is to upgrade to their latest version from their web sites. Please see Why do I keep getting prompted to install Silverlight? for details.
• Is Silverlight enabled?
  For Internet Explorer, select menu item Tools –> Manage Add-ons, make sure Microsoft Silverlight is enabled for all web sites:
  For Firefox, select menu item Tools –> Add-ons, click Plugins tab, make sure Silverlight Plug-In is enabled:
  
  
• Is the issue site specific?
  try http://silverlight.net: if you see the showcase Silverlight application on the top right of the page, then your issue is likely to be site specific, please report the issue to the site owner. O/w, please click the Forums tab at http://silverlight.net page, search and/or report the issue there.  
  
• Is the issue browser specific?
  try open the page in a different browser (IE/Firefox/Chrome on Windows, Safari/Firefox/Chrome on Mac) and see whether the issue repros. If it doesn’t repro, it is likely to be a browser specific configuration issue. Again, it may help to search http://forums.silverlight.net to see whether this is a known issue; and if not, report it.
  

Other Helpful Sources

• For Vancouver Olympics:
  • http://www.mediaevangelism.com/olympics/faq2.aspx
  • http://www.mediaevangelism.com/olympics/faq.aspx
• How to manually clean up a broken Silverlight installation?
• Uninstalling Silverlight 4 Beta on OSX
  
• http://silverlight.net

This is first version, I will keep adding content to the post and keep it up to date with issues I see reported. Thanks!

 

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,Deployment

Why do I keep getting prompted to install Silverlight?

Issue: a few people get prompted repeatedly to install Silverlight while visiting web sites like nbcolympics.com.

Solution: if you have old version of Webshots Toolbar or Kiwee Toolbar from American Greetings, you should upgrade to latest version from their web sites.

Details:

A few people trying to view Olympics videos from www.nbcolympics.com got prompted to install Silverlight, so they did and then hit F5; the page somehow prompted them to install Silverlight again, so they did again; but this time Silverlight install fails with a telltale error code 1514: Silverlight is already installed; if you want to reinstall, you need to uninstall first. So they uninstall and reinstall, but that didn’t help: they got prompted to install Silverlight again.

After quick investigation, I’ve found a common cause of old version of Webshots or Kiwee installed on those users’ machines. To check, you can find Webshots from Control Panel –> Programs and Features:

or on disk:

The fix is to go to www.webshots.com and upgrade to the latest version (3.1.5.7617 for now):

then you should be able to watch Olympics video just fine with Webshots toolbar enabled as well:

I will publish another blog post with common setup issues and solutions for Silverlight.

Disclaimer:

• I am publishing this blog in a hurry to help those with trouble viewing Olympics video, so I may not get all facts right. I’d appreciate all feedback/correction/suggestion.
• This is my personal blog. What I say in this blog is my opinion only. It doesn’t represent Microsoft or any other organization.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,deployment