Application Does Not Launch After Finish Is Clicked on the Install

[#1]

Summary

InstallShield has a feature to launch the installed application upon clicking the Finish button at the end of the installation.

Symptoms

InstallShield has a feature to launch the installed application upon clicking the Finish button at the end of the installation. Occasionally, the application does not actually launch.

Cause

This issue usually occurs due to one of the two following causes:

1. The application needs to be ran as an administrator to launch successfully.
2. The application does not support launching from the command line unless the working directory is the directory where the application resides. In this case, the only way the application can be launched from the command line is to change the directory to where the application is located and then attempt to launch the application rather than specifying the full path where the application is located and trying to launch the application as a part of this path regardless of where the current working directory is.

Steps To Reproduce

With an application that suffers from one of the issues above, enable the option to give the end user the option to launch the application when the installation completes through the Project Assistant > Installation Interview tab.

Resolution

Depending on the cause of the issue as outlined above, do the following to resolve the issue:

1. In the Releases view, select your Release and go to the Setup.exe tab. Set the Required Execution Level to Administrator. This will ensure that the install is always running with the proper privileges to elevate your application.
2. Create a batch file that will change the directory to where the application is installed and then launches the application. Test the batch file to ensure that it will launch your application outside of InstallShield. Then, go to the Custom Action and Sequences view and modify the exe custom action to launch the batch file rather than your application directly.