“Installation Failed” Fix for WordPress 2.8 Upgrade

Great news today that WordPress 2.8 “Baker” is available to upgrade for my blog. I am running a few WordPress blogs that were currently at version 2.7 so took the plunge to upgrade and noticed a few problems along the way. The following is summary of the problems I faced and the work around I used to fix it.

Please note this fix worked for me on 2 upgrades but does not promise a fix for your own problem, these tips may help you but do so at your own risk! Before proceeding with any of the following please back up your site and database!

The Problem

On previous occasions I used the easy”upgrade automatically” button option with no problem but this time around I kept getting this error in the below image:
Installation-Failed-Wordpress2.8

I then de-activated all plugins and re-tried the auto upgrade but still got the same error as the above image, this was not making any sense to me so I searched through the WordPress Forum querying terms such as: Installation Failed, Could not copy file, upgrade failed etc. There was one interesting reply on this thread http://wordpress.org/support/topic/277858?replies=10 that suggested accessing your database using phpMyAdmin and repair your tables.

The Fix

Here’s what that user suggested :

use phpmyadmin,

Check:

1. Login to phpMyAdmin.
2. Select the database and click on ‘Structure‘ tab.
3. Right under the list of table there is a “Check All” link. Click on it to select all tables.
4. From a “With selected:” drop-down menu right next to it, choose “Check table“.

Repair:

1. Login to phpMyAdmin
2. Choose the affected database. If you only have one database, it should choose it by default so you don’t need to do anything.
3. In the main panel, you should see a list of your database tables. Check the boxes by the tables that need repair.
4. At the bottom of the window just below the list of tables, there is a drop down menu. Choose “Repair Table”

The Result

I did follow the above instructions and with all of my plugins still disabled proceeded to use the “upgrade automatically” button again and the result was successful!  The resulting image of the fix is below:

wordpress2.8-successfully-installed

I then re-activated my plugins and all seems to be fine for now.

Summary

For me it seemed that my database table or tables needed to be repaired for some reason beyond my skill set but however on other wordpress upgrades I do remember being asked to upgrade the database after the upgrade finished but this time around with 2.8 that did not happen. Is this a glitch or other? time will tell…

Comments or suggestions appreciated…


WordPress 2.8 Video

Having had a few problems with my upgrade was only a few fixes away but I want to take the opportunity to thank all of the WordPress team for bringing us new tools and releases. The following video is from WordPress and shows you some of those great features with this release.

9 thoughts on ““Installation Failed” Fix for WordPress 2.8 Upgrade”

  1. same problem here… also checked and repaired tables but still error occurs as Installation failed…

    any solution? OR say me few independent files of 2.8.2, i’ll upload manually.

  2. Im still getting “Installation Failed” even after following instructions here.

    Only “Installation Failed” is showing up on my upgrade nothing else.

Comments are closed.