InstallShield LE 2013 broken after installing Visual Studio 2015
Our group has been running InstallShield 2013 LE for quite a while now with no issues. We use it solely for creating setup projects for Windows Services.
Last week several of us in our group installed Visual Studio 2015. Shortly thereafter, we started getting complaints from the testers that our setup projects were no longer working (we are still compiling them using Visual Studio 2013). The projects build just fine, but when installing we get the following error: “Error 1001”. The event logs are equally unhelpful, only stating “The description for Event ID 11001 from source MsiInstaller cannot be found.” and “Installation success or error status: 1603.”
A coworker and I both spent about a day trying various things to get it to work: from uninstalling Visual Studio 2015, to reinstalling Visual Studio 2013, to uninstalling and reinstalling InstallShield LE 2013.
My coworker found that if she unchecked the Installer Class checkbox on the COM & .NET Settings tab on the Properties window of the service’s Primary Output file then the setup.exe runs to completion with no problems (though the application is then not registered as a service on the system).
I have also discovered that if I uninstall the .NET 4.6 framework and reinstall the .NET 4.5.2 framework, I can once again build setup projects that work.
I was hoping that InstallShield LE 2015 would be available but every time I check it only says “Coming Soon”. We have recommended to all of our developers to stop using Visual Studio 2015 and uninstall the .NET 4.6 framework until the InstallShield issues are resolved.
Has anybody else experienced this issue? Is there a better workaround that doesn’t involve uninstalling the .NET 4.6 framework?
I have exact the same problem, search for 1001 and 2015, and as far a i know there is no workaround yet except unchecking the installer, as you described, and use installutil to install the service.
The latest version just released. Please try building your project with it and see if you still get the error.
I downloaded and installed InstallShield 2015 this morning now that it's out. I can confirm that my service now installs correctly when compiled in both VS 2013 and VS 2015 (after InstallShield upgraded the setup project files). Yay! 😄
I did notice an unrelated issue (not sure if it's new to InstallShield 2015 or not). When the installer prompted me to enter the User Id/Password to be used to run the service, I typed in my User Id without the domain name. I *think* that in previous versions of InstallShield it would tell me that the login couldn't be verified and would roll back the install. With InstallShield 2015 it gives me a generic 1001 error and rolls back the install. Reinstalling and entering my credentials correctly made it install, but that 1001 error message for an invalid User Id/Password is pretty cryptic for end users.
