Hi all... So, our install uses the multiple instance capability in IS2009, but that means we get a dialog when we open our setup.exe with the following options: "Install a new instance" and "Maintain or upgrade an existing instance". We'd like to get rid of the dialog and always go with "install a new instance" -- is there a way to do that (with the obvious caveat that we can't just dump the setup.exe, as it's required for the multiple instance support).
The help topic "Setup.exe and Update.exe Command-Line Parameters" describes the /instance switch to setup.exe, with which you can suppress the instance-selection dialog box for an MSI project; and the topic "Run-Time Behavior for Installing Multiple Instances of a Product" describes the msiexec.exe commands one runs without setup.exe for multi-instance installers...
if you don't want to use the command line switch you can go to: Project -> settings -> updates and deselect the option: "Show update UI when appropriate"
I didn't try it with IS2009 - but on IS2008 (InstallScript projects) if you do so this dialog is disappear and you get the OnFirstUI welcome dialog every time you run your setup.exe.
Thanks to you both. Unfortunately, the "Show update UI when appropriate" option doesn't appear to be available for Basic MSI projects.
It looks like I'd have to write my own bootstrap exe to get the /instance option to work (so it selects the next unused instance automatically, rather than forcing the user to do it). Am I correct on that, or am I missing something?
if you don't want to use the command line switch you can go to: Project -> settings -> updates and deselect the option: "Show update UI when appropriate"
was a bug that was fixed in IS2009. The update UI option was not supposed to be related to the multi-instance dialog. In an InstallScript project you would use the -hide_usd option if you wanted to supress this dialog.
However as noted none of this applies to Basic MSI projects.
