Is it possible to run a repair on the base application after a patch has already been installed?
For example, I have a base version 1.0. I also have a small update packaged as a patch (v1.1) that will update only 10 files or so, original is around 2K files.
Can a client who is on version 1.1 (1.0 + 1.1 Patch) run a repair from the 1.0 media to fix a corrupted file that was not included in the patch? What sort of ramifications can this cause for future updates?
You should be able to run a repair either from the Repair button from the application's Add/Remove Programs entry, with msiexec /f, or by re-running the original setup.exe. One thing to note is the repair will run with the patch applied to the base MSI package. Any files not touched by the patch should be repaired from the original media. This shouldn't cause any adverse behavior for any possible updates in the future. (On a side note, a patch installation actually runs a repair of the product with the patch applied to the base cached MSI and any existing patches.)
