Maybe this old thread will help: https://community.flexerasoftware.com/showthread.php?191551-MSBuild-No-outputs-for-project-x-were-provided-but-the-installation-project Last time I checked InstallShield requires 32bit MSBuild. ... View more

web.config schema allows for a second file ( AppSettings file= ) to be specified that contains override values. This allows for the web.config to have stock files and always be safely overwritten by the installer and the override file values ( if exists ) will automatically be merged together when your application goes to read it's settings. More information can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/configure-apps/file-schema/appsettings/appsettings-element-for-configuration ... View more

IS has always installed side by side in my experience. Your right about the file extensions. I wrote a program once about 8 years ago that acted as a version selector. It would look at the ISSchemaVersion in the ISM and launch the right version of IS if installed. Kind of like Visual Studio. It was very easy to write... I'm not sure why Flexera never did this. I guess they just want you on the latest and don't understand that some customers have 2,3,4 versions of IS installed to support different product baselines that choose not to move on. ... View more

I looked at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services and the vast majority but not all have no spaces. I also did a quick test and I was able to install and start a service with a space in it's name using the ServiceInstall and ServiceControl tables. I'm not sure what your issue is, but, MSI and InstallShield should be able to support it. ... View more

I suspect you are trying to use the display name of the service rather then the service internal name. Take a look at the service using Services.msc: http://thewindowsclub.thewindowsclubco.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Start-stop-disable-Windows-Services.png In the above example you would want "tzautoupdate" not "Auto Time Zone Updater" ... View more

Wow, I really haven't even jokingly tried to do win98 in almost 10 years: http://iswix.com/2008/07/21/windows-98-on-hyper-v/ But if I was, I'd say any recent version of InstallShield *should* be able to build an MSI that could run on Win 98 provided that you don't use any of the custom actions and you set the summary information stream to something really old such as Windows Installer 2.0. The setup.exe might even be able to install Windows Installer 2.0 for you. To be honest, I was using InstallShield 5.0 (Build 227?) or something like that back then. We were on NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 when I made the switch over to MSI so many moons ago. ... View more

I haven't upgraded InstallShield in a few versions so I'm not really sure what is and isn't supported. But I did want to point out that if you are just building a MSI you could always sign it postbuild. If you are building a setup.exe bootstrapper/chainer/suite installer it probably gets more complicated. ... View more

I'd eliminate the custom action calling "sc" and replace it with an entry in the ServiceControl table.- ... View more

I'm not sure what you mean. The product comparison chart shows all versions of IS has VS 2015 support. http://www.flexerasoftware.com/producer/products/software-installation/installshield-software-installer/tab/editions VS 2015 CE has addin support and I've used IS 2015 LE with VS 2015 CE so I can't imagine why Express wouldn't work also. ... View more

mjj964 wrote: From what I've read, it seems that InstallAware was created by some folks who originally worked at InstallShield, and then left and created a better product from everything they'd learned. I guess that's the benefit of getting to start from scratch :-), as you don't have to keep on supporting all the issues from past development mistakes! I see this InstallAware video, which I presume was created by InstallAware themselves. Has anybody out there done their own side-by-side comparison, building installations from both systems? I looked around the InstallAware questions page on StackOverflow and didn't see anything substantial there. If InstallAware was a better product, I'd be using it. I can tell you though that I get sick of the owner stalking me on the internet and sending me abusive hate emails every time I have something good to say about someone other then InstallAware. ... View more

Excellent! The hot fix worked! I almost reported it didn't work but then I realized I had selected the wrong TFS build controller. Yes, it's been one of those days.... 🙂 Thanks, Chris ... View more

ISCmdBld.exe works also. The problem only manfiests itself when using MSBuild / InstallShield.targets via Full Blown IS 2015 and SAB Only installations. ... View more

It was suggested to me to investigate path length issues. FWIW, it doesn't seem to be a path length issue. I also reproduced the issue without the use of a merge module. I'm able to build locally using the IDE. On my build server using TFS/MSbuild/SAB I get the error when this DLL is consumed directly or via merge module. As an aside, the attached DLL also generates an internal build error 6212 when .NET dependency scanning is set to Dependencies and Properties. I get past this error by changing it to Properties only (my normal best practice) but then get the platform arch validation error message. ... View more

The way I would do it would be to write mututally exclusive ControlEvents with conditions such as DisplayCustomerInformation and NotDisplayCustomerInformation. Then in your build automation (either passing properties to IsCmdBld or the MSBuild targets or by modifying the ISM with the automation interface) I would seed the property DisplayCustomerInformation = 1 into the installer when you want it displayed. It's also possible to do this by having a merge module that contains this property and using product configuration flags to control it's inclusion into the installer. ... View more