Arduino IDE, when "installed" from a portable zip file, asks to update and installs... somewhere random

[trollcop]

Describe the problem

Basically the title.

Windows, arduino 2.0.4 installed from zip to f:\arduino (for example), will popup a "update" dialog on startup, download and install 2.1.1 somewhere unknown.

To reproduce

1. install 2.0.4
2. run
3. allow to update to 2.1.1
4. ???

Expected behavior

Update 2.0.4 installation to 2.1.1

Arduino IDE version

2.0.4

Operating system

Windows

Operating system version

10

Additional context

No response

Issue checklist

• I searched for previous reports in the issue tracker
• I verified the problem still occurs when using the latest nightly build
• My report contains all necessary details

[kittaakos]

Thanks for taking the time and filing the bug report.

Windows, arduino 2.0.4 installed from zip

will popup a "update" dialog on startup

install 2.1.1 somewhere unknown.

No matter how you installed IDE2 (zip or NSIS) on Windows, the auto-updater will always be NSIS: https://www.electron.build/auto-update.html#auto-updatable-targets. It's not a bug.

We are aware of inconsistencies between the installation paths on Windows: #879.

As described at #879 (comment), the installation path is, unlike you state, not random:

Windows MSI installer Windows Installer %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\arduino-ide
(e.g., C:\Users\per\AppData\Local\Programs\arduino-ide)
Windows MSI installer Windows Installer
(ALLUSERS=1) %PROGRAMFILES%\arduino-ide
(e.g., C:\Program Files\arduino-ide)

We prefer keeping one open GitHub issue for the same topic. If you have more details, please comment on the open issue. I appreciate your understanding.