sideman

@songdogtech @esmi Thank you both for your suggestions.

I can now update!

I created a tmp folder under wp-content

and made sure it had write permissions.

I added

define(‘WP_TEMP_DIR’, ABSPATH . ‘wp-content/tmp’);

as the last line of my wp-config.php

after

/** WordPress absolute path to the WordPress directory. */
if ( !defined(‘ABSPATH’) )
define(‘ABSPATH’, dirname(__FILE__) . ‘/’);

/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once(ABSPATH . ‘wp-settings.php’);

(not sure if the order is important but I thought ABSPATH probably should be defined if I’m going to use it.

Then I tried to update plugins and themes and all I tried updated perfectly.

Once again thank you both.

I suspect neither of you needed to read my steps to success but I’ve included them for two reasons

– help others
– help me – please let me know if there is a better practice I should follow

Finally – Do you think this behaviour is likely to stay in future versions of WordPress? If “yes” what is the best thing I can do to help other WordPress on Windows users – for example is there a gotcha list this could be added to?

Thanks for the replies. I’ve read them and I still believe WordPress 3.5 is the source of the problem or to put it another way, WordPress 3.5 is has altered something such that updates fail to function as they have in previous versions.

Why do I believe this?

I have a number of WordPress installations hosted on the same Windows environment (on the same physical server hosted by the same hosts with the same plugins, theme & configurations).

None of the 3.5 versions allow updates.

All of the 3.4.1 versions allow updates.

I’m happy to talk to my hosting service to ask them to investigate, but what do I ask them to look at when functionality that works on WordPress versions earlier than the 3.5 release no longer works on the 3.5 release?

By the way, am I right that even the upgrade to 3.5 via the Admin Updates page uses the WordPress functionality in question?

If this is true (you experts know what goes on under the hood far better than I) then how is it that I successfully updated to 3.5 and then on trying to update plugins and themes, directly after the 3.5 update, this functionality stopped working?

As I said I’m happy to talk to my hosting service but isn’t there cause to investigate WordPress 3.5 also?

songdotech thank you for your reply.

You are likely to be correct when you say that it is a Windows environment issue.

However all previous versions of WordPress that supported this type of update process worked without problems on all my Windows hosted WordPress sites.

Does this not imply that WordPress 3.5 has altered functionality in some way so that a feature that used to work for several versions on Windows, now no longer works.

Surely that implies a bug that has been introduced in the 3.5 release?

You may have knowledge/information that indicates I am incorrect and I am open to reconsider my position on reading it however your suggestion of switching to a linux platform sounds a bit drastic.

Surely that suggestion would only be reasonable if the feature never worked on Windows at all.

Please let me know what you think and thanks again for responding.

I run WordPress on a Windows server and since updating to 3.5 I cannot update plugins, themes etc. via the WordPress Updates admin page.

As indicated by rhosie above I also get an error

An error occurred while updating Twenty Ten: The package could not be installed. PCLZIP_ERR_MISSING_FILE (-4) : Missing archive file ‘C:\WINDOWS\TEMP/twentyten.tmp’.

I have applied write permissions to the root of the WordPress installation but it still fails.

Perhaps the update process is attempting to use a folder that does not exist or is outside the WordPress installation folder/sub folders.