Very strange custom theme issue...

[CoreyZ]

So I had created a custom theme for our company a while back. Used it on a couple of products which worked fine when I was running the packages on windows 7/server 2008 machines. The problem arose however on running the packages on a machine that was a lower version (server 2003 for example). The initial setup.exe file would launch and the theme would display on it as it unpacks the msi. Once the MSI launches however, the theme is non existant and where ever a graphic SHOULD be, displays as just grey.

I included a couple links to examples so you know what I am talking about. Hope its something stupid I am overlooking.

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4418/installshieldthemeexamp.jpg

[joshstechnij]

Do the images that are used for this theme display correctly if you open them directly on the machine(s) exhibiting this behavior? If they don't, then it is possible Windows doesn't like the images for some reason.

In any case, these images are displayed by controls built in the Windows Installer. As such, we have limited ability to determine why this behavior would be occurring (we can verify the tables an MSI package that results in this behavior are populated correctly; MSI validation can help to determine if this is the case). Can you reproduce this behavior with a sample MSI that can be attached to this thread?

[CoreyZ]

joshstechnij wrote:
Do the images that are used for this theme display correctly if you open them directly on the machine(s) exhibiting this behavior? If they don't, then it is possible Windows doesn't like the images for some reason.

In any case, these images are displayed by controls built in the Windows Installer. As such, we have limited ability to determine why this behavior would be occurring (we can verify the tables an MSI package that results in this behavior are populated correctly; MSI validation can help to determine if this is the case). Can you reproduce this behavior with a sample MSI that can be attached to this thread?

I created a small MSI that unpackages the theme files to a directory in program files. It has the same results and will only display the images in the MSI on a win7/server2008 machine.

[joshstechnij]

It looks like MSI just doesn't like these images. The following is from a log of running this MSI on a Windows 2003 machine with MSI 3.1 installed:

Action start 12:56:54: InstallWelcome.
Info 2858. The data for the bitmap Image is not valid.

I was able to resolve this issue on Windows 2003 by doing the following:
1. Open the image files in MS Paint on a Windows 7 machine.
2. Click Save in MS Paint.
3. Stream the image file back into the Binary table in the MSI.

A binary diff of the before and after of the image files in the above steps shows a large number of differences, but since we're not experts in graphics file formats, I'm not sure what the changes indicate.

Running the MSI again on Windows 2003 after the above steps results in the dialog images displaying correctly from what I can tell.

Note that to resolve this issue, you should only need to open the images in Paint, save them, and rebuild any MSIs that include them. For whatever reason, Windows Installer on Windows 2003 doesn't like the original format of these files.

[CoreyZ]

joshstechnij wrote:
It looks like MSI just doesn't like these images. The following is from a log of running this MSI on a Windows 2003 machine with MSI 3.1 installed:

Action start 12:56:54: InstallWelcome.
Info 2858. The data for the bitmap Image is not valid.

I was able to resolve this issue on Windows 2003 by doing the following:
1. Open the image files in MS Paint on a Windows 7 machine.
2. Click Save in MS Paint.
3. Stream the image file back into the Binary table in the MSI.

A binary diff of the before and after of the image files in the above steps shows a large number of differences, but since we're not experts in graphics file formats, I'm not sure what the changes indicate.

Running the MSI again on Windows 2003 after the above steps results in the dialog images displaying correctly from what I can tell.

Note that to resolve this issue, you should only need to open the images in Paint, save them, and rebuild any MSIs that include them. For whatever reason, Windows Installer on Windows 2003 doesn't like the original format of these files.

Very interesting... They were originally created in Photoshop, so I will do your work-around and get them functioning in our MSI. Really am curious as to the difference though and why its OS version specific lol.