How can I remove duplicate Add/Remove entries?

[Megz77]

Hello:
I am having a problem with duplicate entries in Add/Remove programs. I repackaged GNU DiffUtils 2.8.7 using Repackager and even though it's not a upgrade when I install the MSI it is creating two entries in Add/Remove Programs for this package. I used a VM of Server 2008 to do the repackaging. I'm assuming that the vendor provided .exe is creating one, and Repackager is creating the other. How can I get rid of the vendor provided entry in Add/Remove Programs? Or can I suppress the Repackager version of the entry? I searched the knowledge base and Google but cannot find a solution that works in my case. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Megan

[Cary_R]

Hi Megan,

In your Repackager project, look for entries under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

And exclude them. That should fix you up, I suspect.

Regards,

Cary

[Megz77]

Hi Cary,
Thanks SO much...your fix worked like a charm and is much appreciated!

Thanks again!
Megan

P.S. While I have your attention, I'm having another problem with Infragistics NetAdvantage and figured it couldn't hurt to ask the question here as well. I was looking for a way to install the product silently without success so I created a repackager project using the vendor provided EXE and my company's license key. The product installs without issue on the box I'm creating the MSI on (as I am doing the capture), however, when I go to install the newly created MSI on another box to test it, I get an error saying the license is invalid, however it is not invalid and works perfectly when installed by hand. Any suggestions? I also have a post on the Infragistics forum regarding sytax for a silent install, but any help with the MSI would be great!

Thanks again!

[Cary_R]

Hi Megan,

Licensing is painful when repackaging. Intentionally so, actually.

Generally the normal licensing process will take a key and write some computed data somewhere hard-to-get-to on the hard disk (sometimes at a very low level, below even the file system) so that the "Activated" state of the software is tied to that specific machine.

While activation data on a filesystem level is valid on the machine you're repackaging on, the second you move it to another machine, it's no longer valid since the unique identifiers no longer match the computed data.

This is a very high-level overview of this common problem, as you'd probably guessed. Generally the solution has to come from the vendor in the form of a volume license. There may or may not be a mechanism for including this in your MSI Package via a custom action. So I think you've done the right thing in reaching out to them for a solution.

[Megz77]

Thanks again Cary, your explaination helped. Hopefully I can resolve the issue with the software vendor.

I appreciate your fast response. 🙂
Thanks for your help
Megan