Upgrading the TIBCO Spotfire Web Player (webupdate.bat) fails with the error "The application has failed to start because the side by side configuration is incorrect"

Upgrading the TIBCO Spotfire Web Player (webupdate.bat) fails with the error "The application has failed to start because the side by side configuration is incorrect"

When attempting to upgrade the TIBCO Spotfire Web Player, after running webupdate.bat, the following error is seen:

The application has failed to start because the side by side configuration is incorrect please see the application event log or use the command line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail

This is caused by an XML validation error becuase of the Spotfire.Dxp.SupportDiagnostics.config file. This error may be seen if there is invalid XML in the Spotfire.Dxp.SupportDianostics.config file. For example this might be seen with special characters in a password like:

<setting name="Credentials_Password" serializeAs="String">
 <value>4%TGhy6&</value> 
</setting>

Here the "&" at the end of the password is the cause of the validation error.

To resolve the issue, you can validate your Spotfire.Dxp.SupportDianostics.config with an XML validation tool (for example: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_validator.asp) in order to find the incorrect line.

Then correct the issue (for example, create a new password without the "&" sign)

Then run the batch file webupdate.bat again once the config file has been confirmed to be valid XML.