Cubase 14 installation issue

Cubase
,
1

Due to the comming end of the elicenser service I decided to update my Cubase 11 Pro Version to Cubase 14 Pro.
Also, Cubase 8.5 and Cubase 9 are still present on the system as well as Absolute 3.
I remember some difficulties to separate content from installation since the old download tool didn’t ask for a specific location (resulting in installing everything in user directory and programdata) until every installer was started separately and manually, which enabled to choose program and content location.
With the actual installer one can choose the content location which is much simpler. So far.

I also remember a licencing issue in the past with the coexistence of Halion with another plugin, which could have been solved by using a soft licence (if I remember right). Maybe the problem was that Halion 6 was only 64 Bit and Halion 5 still provided a 32 Bit version (for legacy projects using other 32 Bit plugins). As a result, I never installed Halion 6.

Now, when installing Cubase 14, I get an error when installing Halion Sonic 7, error 1603. This error is ambiguous, probably it tells that such an application is already present (and blocking the installation).
However, since Halion 6 was already part of Absolute 3 and I don’t need the 32 bit version of Halion 5, I decided to uninstall Halion 5. But the uninstaller tells nearly the same problem, error 1613.

So the question is, what is blocking installing and uninstalling?

2

They’re Windows errors meaning a file can’t be found, or a program that looks for files can’t be found, or some such human-unreadable thing.

E.g., the uninstaller file and data is missing.

Ironically the fix that sometimes works is to re-install the app in question, which hopefully saves the needed file to the needed location.

I think you can also force uninstall using a utility such as HiBit Uninstaller

3

you could also use the Steinberg Library Manager to move around or delete

4

for content though, not apploications

5

I already uninstalled Halion 5_64 with the help of MS fix it. That didn’t help trying to install Halion Sonic 7. Interestingly, Halion 5_32 could be removed without any problems.
I don’t quite understand the hierarchy philosophy of Steinberg. There are Halion Sonic (2) and Halion Sonic SE (3) still present. Is that any problem? Is there any other restriction I’m not aware of?
Cubase 14 modified a lot in the content (that’s another problem). I don’t think that any content blocks anything. Or am I wrong?

6

For content:

7

It’s not a problem I believe, and I think Halion Sonic 7 is needed in order to use the the newer Steinberg Licensing system with content.

As far as naming, Halion Sonic 7 superseded Halion Sonic SE

8

Well, I should have read more carefully in the Windows event viewer, because from the beginning it was logged “Halion Sonic 2 64 bit error 1316. The specified account already exists.” (translated, may be not fully correct).
Because I didn’t see that I went further to uninstall every version of Halion (Sonic) until I stucked at that version I could not uninstall.
But - after starting “repair” instead of “uninstall” it went thru the whole installation. And then I could uninstall it and all the magic has gone.

I’m quite shure - simply repairing this single version would have done the trick. One and only the reason remains a secret…