Program tries to reinstall when clicked on its icon and overwrites the registry!
Hello,
I am using IS LE within VS 2013. I set up some registry entries in HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE for the database location for the installed program. This entry is changed after the program installed to set certain key values for the user specific database location and is the same for all the users who logged on the this computer. After the change, the installed program would know the intended for all the users who would log on to the machine. The installation also creates a program icon for users to start the program. On one computer this is what was happening after the installation:
1. For the person who installed the program on the computer with full admin rights, everything works as normal: the program would start when the user double clicks on the installed program icon on the desktop, then it would read the registry for the database location, then would connect to the database and work even after the user restarts the computer. 2. But for any other user, the following happens. When the user double clicks on the program icon, a message box opens and says that it is installing the program. After a few seconds, "finishes installation", then comes up with an error message that it could not find the database. At this stage if I enter the registry, I find out that the registry is the original one installed during the program installation! If I edit to registry for the right parameters, the program then finds the database properly and it works properly. But if the user logs of and logs in again, same thing happens. So, for some reason, Windows is resetting program shortcut after a restarting or new log in and is reinstalling the program with the original settings. This is the same for all the users who logs in to this computer. Any ideas? How can set IS to avoid this happening? Or is this independent of IS installation?
You are running into the resilience feature of Windows Installer. If the installer places file in per user locations, the original user can access the resource, but other users cannot. If you look in the event viewer logs for 1001 and 1004 events you will get a component guid. Open the built MSI in Orca and see which files are causing the issue.
Thank you for your response. I created a setup.exe file not an msi file. In the past we had a dialog box that gave option to install either for all users or just the user who is doing to installation. It seems that since the installer doe snot put a shortcut icon on his/her desktop, a manually created shortcut links the setup program not to the executable, therefore the attempt to reinstall the program. So is there a way to use this dialog box under LE so that, installation program installs the program icon for all users (or a way to set ALLUSERS=1)? Thank you.
