Incompatible NVDA Version Keeps Add-ons Disabled in Compatible Versions

[cary-rowen]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Upgrading from 2023.2 to the latest alpha-29134 There are some installed add-ons that are disabled because they are incompatible with 2024.1.
2. Downgrade NVDA back to 2023.2.

Actual behavior:

Add-ons that are disabled because they are incompatible with the NVDA version that breaks compatibility are still disabled in compatible NVDA versions

Expected behavior:

These add-ons should be available again in NVDA2023.2 as they are actually compatible with NVDA-2023.2.

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments:

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

Installed

NVDA version:

NVDA-alpha-29134, and NVDA-2023.2

Windows version:

Windows 10 22H2 (AMD64) build 19045.3393

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

none

Other information about your system:

None

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

Yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

No

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

Not tested

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

Yes

[CyrilleB79]

I have encountered the same issue because I have been using the same config folder with the installer of the alpha (using "-c %appdata%\nvda" command line option). Worse: when turning back to installed NVDA 2023.2, not only are all the add-ons disabled, but it's even impossible to re-enable them.

Note however that NVDA downgrade is not a supported use case.

@seanbudd, if a simple change can be done anyway for this, that would be a nice to have; but I understand that NV Access will not spend some time to support a downgrade scenario.

[seanbudd]

Closing this as we don't support downgrading.