Just wanting to confirm - is sims.net in the base, or in a layer, when you experience the problem with the update not terminating.
I'm trying to determine whether your problem is due to the presence of the SVS client only. Also, does it make any difference if the SVS client has running layers, or if the layers are all disabled but with the client still installed?

I've tried it in both settings.

App is in the base with and then with the app as a SVS layer.  Same problem in both cases.

I've not tried disabling all the other SVS layers with the App in the base layer.  I'll give that a go.  But I have tried disabling all the layers except my apps which is in a layer.  This didn't work.

What you are saying, if I understand correctly, is that if you install to the base O/S with no SVS client installed, then all is OK.
We don't at the moment know if there are any issues if you install to the base O/S with SVS client installed but no layers active.

Do you know if this application installs any system services?  Does it rely on .NET framework?

If the base O/S install is OK with SVS installed but no layers active, then this may be down to priority settings of the layers compared to the base O/S, or of course it could be a bug in the SVS client, or possibly a copy protection scheme by the software vendor to stop people virtualising the install and then distributing the resultant VSA. 
In terms of priority, I believe the default is for apps in layers to have a higher priority than the base O/S so that layer files are used in preference to base O/S files where both exist in the same location. This could cause a problem if, for example, you had some newer .NET files in the layer, relying on some older versions of other .NET files in the base. Tricky one to sort out though.

The way forward may be to install on a clean O/S with no SVS, then use a capture tool to monitor the install of a monthly update - this will give you a full picture of where changes are being made to the target system and may help to diagnose the problem. If you are working with the app in a layer, there may be permissions issues with updating files in a read-only layer, for example.

Alternatively, there may be activity in the file system or registry that is outside the general scope of SVS.

Hi EdT,

Thanks for your advice.  It's given me some pointers to start with.  I've just deactivated all layers with my App in the base OS and the program still wouldn't run.  I'm going to try what you suggest to see what is actually getting installed.  I know that it does use .NET framework so possibly it's trying to install a new version.

I'll keep you posted.

Thanks

OK so I installed the update in a clean virtual PC and it installed all ok and terminated ok.  I captured everything in a layer and from what i can see, it's doing nothing more then just copying updated files to to the program location.  Nothing goes into the system folder and there are no registry changes.

The fact that it terminated ok makes we think there is something else that could be causing the problem.  What I do know for sure is that if you uninstall SVS, it installs ok.

Not much further forward.  Any other suggestions anyone?

I would contact support since you have a paid license.

One thing that I can think of, since installing with no activate layers doesn't work, is that maybe the exe is calling something that should be on SVS's Process Ignore list.  You can run Process Explorer (from System Internals) to see is any other applications are being called by your installer.