Troubleshooting

Elevation Failures

UAC prompt not appearing: Astro-Up elevates the installer process via ShellExecuteEx with runas. If UAC is disabled via Group Policy, installers requiring elevation will fail. Either enable UAC or run Astro-Up itself as administrator.

Elevation denied: When you click "No" on the UAC prompt, the installer returns a cancellation exit code. Astro-Up reports this as a failed operation. Re-run and accept the prompt.

elevation = "self" packages: These installers trigger their own UAC. If they fail silently, the installer may not support the silent switches in the manifest. Try interactive mode: astro-up install <package> --yes (uses interactive switches).

Version Detection

Version shows 1.0.0 or 0.0.0: The installer wrote a placeholder version to the registry or PE header. Run astro-up scan after the software has been launched once -- many applications update their version info on first run.

Software installed but not detected: Check astro-up show <package-id> to confirm it is in the catalog. Portable installations without registry entries need a pe_file or file_exists detection method in the manifest. If the manifest lacks a [detection] section, the lifecycle test workflow discovers one automatically.

False "update available": Version format mismatch between detected version and catalog version. For example, registry reports 3.1.0.2008 but the catalog has 3.1.0. Report at astro-up-manifests issues -- the fix is adding version_regex to normalize the format.

Asset Selection

"Asset selection cancelled": The package has multiple download assets (e.g., 32-bit vs 64-bit, qt5 vs qt6). In non-interactive mode or when no selector is provided, the first asset is picked automatically. In the GUI, a dialog prompts you to choose.

Catalog

Catalog not refreshing: The catalog has a TTL (default 24h). Force with astro-up catalog refresh. If the catalog file is corrupted (integrity check fails), delete it from %APPDATA%\nightwatch\astro-up\data\ and re-sync.

Catalog schema unsupported: Your astro-up version is older than the catalog. Update astro-up: astro-up self-update.

Downloads

Download fails: Downloads are resumable -- re-run the command and it continues from where it stopped. Check proxy settings (network.proxy) if behind a firewall.

Slow downloads: Set a speed limit with network.download_speed_limit if you need to cap bandwidth during imaging sessions.

General

Verbose output

astro-up --verbose scan

Log file

Enable file logging: set logging.log_to_file to true via astro-up config. Logs are written to %APPDATA%\nightwatch\astro-up\data\logs\. Old logs are pruned after logging.max_age_days (default 365).

Reporting issues

Include with your bug report:

• The command you ran with --verbose output
• Your Windows version
• Which package was affected

File issues at github.com/nightwatch-astro/astro-up/issues.