I'm referring to InstallShield 2008 Premiere which I use to deploy my application. The question is: What happens if the installation process is interrupted at some point by a power failure (for example). It leaves my system in an incomplete state after restarting .. and in the impossibility to neither uninstall or install my application completely. A clean image must be installed to use the application. I'm sure that someone has been hit by this problem 😉 Any help would be appreciated,
If you are using a Basic MSI project, the install should resume the next time you try to run the installation or another MSI based installation on the machine (assuming that the install was interrupted in the deferred portion of the execute sequence). For InstallScript MSI projects, the installation may or may not resume correctly due to the added complexity of this project type. InstallScript projects do not have this type of functionality available.
If a Basic MSI or InstallScript MSI project does not resume correctly, you can try using the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301/en-us) to remove any registration for the installation, and then manually delete any files/folders that had been installed. The C:\Program Files\InstallShield Installation Information\{ProductCode} folder should be deleted if the setup is an InstallScript MSI project.
For InstallScript projects, you can delete the uninstall key in the registry (HKLM/HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{ProductCode}) and delete the C:\Program Files\InstallShield Installation Information\{ProductCode} folder. This should allow the installation to run as a first time install again from setup.exe.
The installer is Basic-MSI. I guess it should be a way to make the installation reversible at all times. The MS tool for repairing the installation is not such a good idea when the product goes to the final client. Can I make this in an automated way ? Or set the installation to do this by itself in case it crashes ?
The resume installation functionality is built in to the Windows Installer engine and cannot be externally controlled through any settings. Windows Installer will resume an installation when it is launched again, or if another MSI package is run, if it knows that the previous installation was not run to completion. The actual mechanics of this are not documented, but Windows Installer likely maintains a registry entry that is set while the deferred portion of an installation's execute sequence is running and clears this entry when the installation completes successfully or fails (since MSI installations are transaction based, ACID concepts are used to a certain extent). There is no method of controlling this functionality.
Note that another thing you may try with a Basic MSI project (before trying the Windows Installer Cleanup utility) is re-run the MSI installation with one of the following command lines: setup.exe /v"REINSTALLMODE=vomus"
-- or -- msiexec.exe /I C:\PathToPackage\MsiPackage.msi REINSTALLMODE=vomus
