Now ALLUSERS installation does not uninstall cleanly!
In my previous thread, I described how ISX2008 only installed some folders, but no folder contents, when an ALLUSERS=1 install was performed on a Windows XP Pro system with 1 admin and 2 regular users. I found that, in order to get the folders in the regular users to install properly, I had to delete and recreate the folders in the ISX2008 project.
Now... I get a clean install in admin (the primary installation) and user1, but when I uninstall the application (from admin) almost ALL of the folders in admin are left behind (with contents!!). They are not uninstalled. However they are uninstalled in the secondary logon.
How is this supposed to work? Do I have to recreate all of my installer projects from scratch in ISX2008 in order to be able to get this feature to work properly??
Can someone from Acresso please give me a hand here? I've spent two days messing around with this. If I have to recreated these projects from scratch, it will be more than a week!! All this to enable a feature that is one mouse-click.
Are you testing on a clean image each time (for instance, a virtual machine that you revert between tests), or have you installed and uninstalled on this machine several times, and perhaps just deleted files to make the machine look right?
If the latter, chances are really good that the SharedDLL or other reference counts on that machine are messed up, and while remaking your project might sidestep that, you're fighting a problem that wouldn't exist on a fresh machine.
Testing on a 'real' machine. Can I guarantee reset by destroying and creating new users? I am installing/uninstalling. If any files are left over after uninstall, I am deleting them. Note that a 'normal' uninstall does not leave any files behind.
I deleted all of the users, including my admin user, and created new ones. Then I installed/uninstalled under the admin user only (did not activate under a limited user). No files were left behind after uninstall.
Then I reinstalled under admin and invoked the installation on my two new limited user accounts. Then uninstalled from admin. All files and folders in the PersonalFolder group were left behind on admin and one user. The other user had a couple of files and folders left behind (seems fairly random).
It looks like all files are always uninstalled from the ProgramFiles group.
Edit: On the same test machine, I reinstalled under the admin user (after making sure that the files and folders in PersonalFolder were deleted) and then I uninstalled without having run any of the limited user accounts. It uninstalls clean. So it has something to do with installing/running under a second account that messes up the uninstaller.
I finally came to the conclusion that the ALLUSERS setting of ISX just does not support projects that install files in the PersonalFolder (My Documents) folder of the current user. It sort-of works in some cases, and not in others. It just acts flakey on installation and uninstallation. The bottom line is that if you want to enable installation for all users, you can't be putting files in the current user's folders.
P.S. I'd like to thank Acresso for all their assistance on this... NOT.
Oh. Knowing you were talking about folders that were per-user would have helped us help you. It's fairly common knowledge that uninstallation of a Windows Installer package will only uninstall from the machine and the current user's locations; it cannot remove HKCU registry keys or PersonalFolder files from users other than the one executing the install. And as you say, getting the installation right such that the files (or keys) are created for each successive user is tricky at best, and provides a bad user experience at worst. Because of all those limitations, I'd assumed you were talking about a file in a shared location not being removed.
