I have instalScript project upgraded from 11.5 premier to 2012 premier. It Contains plenty of Com and Dotnet components, After upgrading it gives "0x8000ffff catastrophic failure" and exits, It works in Xp. Script Contains "OnSelfRegistrationError()" Function, I found that setup doesn't trigger the function. Please help me resolving the problem.
I have a similar problem on Windows 7. I suspect it has something to do with the DAO 3.5 or Jet 3.51 module.
Also, I wonder if there's a way to get the main error code. From Ted's list, this can be one of the problems with code -5005, -5006, -5009 and -5012. I'd like to narrow it down to one of them.
If this error is occurring on Windows Vista or newer versions of Windows, this issue is likely related to what registry or other system changes any self-registering files in this setup are attempting to do. If any of these files attempts to write to protected parts of the registry (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa382503(v=vs.85).aspx) while they are registering themselves, an error will occur and will cause an error such as this.
The reason this issue would not have occurred with older versions of InstallShield (prior to InstallShield 12) is due to the fact that these versions did not contain an application manifest in setup.exe. As a result, Windows detected the installations as legacy setups and applied a number of application compatibility shims, including shims to suppress errors caused by attempting to modify Windows protected resources. All setups built with InstallShield 12 or newer contain an application manifest to indicate to Windows that they are modern applications that will not attempt to make any system changes that are not supported.
The recommended resolution to issues such as this is to modify the COM or .NET components that attempt to modify resources which are protected so that they can correctly run on modern versions of Windows. Short of making these changes, the files can be registered manually with regsvr32.exe (which always has appcompat shims applied to suppress errors caused by modifying Windows protected resources) and ensure that no components in the project are marked as self-registering if they contain files that cause this behavior.
Thanks Josh. Turns out the problem goes away if I use the new DAO 3.50 merge module. The description of the module says that it has no dependency but Jet3.51 is required (which is documented in the description of the old DAO 3.5 installshield object). There's no Jet 3.51 merge module but I can just use the installshield object in "InstallShield 2012 InstallScript Legacy Objects" installation.
