Please bear with me..my first time with msi and InstallShield. I'm finding it frustrating.
I now have a situation where two of my exe's aren't getting uninstalled. If I 'clear key file' they get uninstalled. If I choose 'Set Key File' for them as it should be (and like all the other exe's & DLL's are), they don't get uninstalled.
I've removed them from the Components list and added them back, renamed them, searched all the Tables for their presence (because it feels to me like InstallShield doesn't always clean up the tables properly) but still no joy.
I've assigned different GUID's for them, set 'Shared' & 'Permanent' to No. Their properties look identical to the other files/components which are getting uninstalled properly. There aren't any dependencies on them that I can tell.
The following MSDN article provides a list of the most common causes of files not being removed for MSI installations: Removing Stranded Files
Also note that one cause not included in that list is two components in the same package installing the same keyfile to the same folder. This will normally be reported by ICE30 if the MSI package is validated.
There weren't any ref counts for it in the Registry.
I went through each of the relevant tables (Components, Files, etc.) and manually renamed the Component (and other PK values) to something new and clearly unique. That did the trick, though I can't say why, I wasn't able to discover any leftovers or orphaned records for them.
I find myself manually editing the tables directly more & more. I'm just not sure about the 'refresh' sequence between the various Views (Project Assistant, Installation Designer, and the various subviews within Installation Designer). I find dummy/empty components getting created here and there. I'm also experiencing AV's when copying & pasting Component nodes, but overall 2010 seems pretty stable.
I've seen a similar problem previously. The problem was with the "permanent" option of a component. If you install a "non-permanent" component that was previously installed as "permanent" on that computer, the component will still be considered permanent. Guess it makes sense in a way...
I have seen a similiar issue and in my poking around found out that at least in windows installer 3.1 and before any component flagged as permanent just has the count that is maintained for sharing set to a very high number. So once a component is installed with this setting it will not ever be uninstalled or replaced unless there is a newer version of the same component, and then it still won't be uninstalled.
This is one of many reasons for testing installs on virtual machines, since you can easily restore to a previously known point with very little effort.
