Grrr.... no, that solution doesn't work. It does work on English language systems but the problem is that you need to specify each class of user using a hardwired string. So you need to set permissions for 'Users' say - or 'Administrators' When a Portuguese customer tried this, we quickly realised that in Portugal, the 'Users' group is called 'Utilizadores' . Our setup.exe file failed with error 1609 and refused to continue - so that was the end of that.! Debbie, this feature needs to work in the same way that pre-defined folders work - e.g. [LocalAppData] is used for convenience within my InstallShield project - but in the outside world it gets translated to whichever folder is relevant on the end-user's system. The same idea (or something similar) needs to work for setting user permissions. Is anything like this implemented in the latest version of InstallShield? If so, this would be a good excuse for me to upgrade. ... View more

Thanks again Debbie, especially for that KB link which I'll look into later. I must admit, practical experience has taught me that with the huge variety of Windows installations, there's actually no folder (except for 'My Documents') which guarantees write access for any specific user. Even the folder returned by CSIDL_PERSONAL isn't guaranteed to be writable! So I think that if I can get the installer to configure the folders, it'll hopefully be my best shot. In case anyone else needs to know how to do this, I discovered that I can set permissions based on 'classes' of users. These can somehow be qualified by the addition of a 'domain' but I'm not sure what effect that has and it doesn't seem to be essential. You can leave the Domain field empty if you like. For the relevant components, what I did was to set up two classes of user:- 'Administrators' and 'Users'. For each entry, I specified the required permissions (in my case, they were the same for both cases). This seems to have done the trick. As usual with Windows, it probably won't work on every system. For example, Win7 Home Edition doesn't seem to have Administrators or Users. It seems to just have one class of user called 'Everyone'. However, 'Everyone' seems to have full access to everything - so it should still work, even if it doesn't work (if that makes sense!) ... View more

Thanks Debbie. As usual, your reply has prompted me to take a closer look at my project settings. Firstly, my InstallShield project currently specifies [ProgramFilesFolder]Mixbus as the default install destination (i.e. [INSTALLDIR]). That folder has a subfolder called "etc" into which we install some preliminary config files. These folders get created at install time by the InstallShield installation wizard. The actual config files get overwritten when the user first runs our app. Some users (mostly running Windows 7, from what I can tell) are seeing run time errors indicating that it wasn't possible to open the config files. We're assuming (probably reasonably) that this is because the user doesn't have write access to the "etc" folder. However, now it gets interesting... on looking at my project I've discovered that any folder created by InstallShield can be created with specific permissions. I seem to be able to specify permissions under two columns:- 'Domain' and 'User'. I'm not sure though what I need to type into those boxes. The help info window for Destination Permissions recommends not defining any permissions but maybe I should experiment with some. What would you recommend I type into the 'Domain' and 'User' boxes? Also, does InstallShield create a log file at install time? If so and you can tell me where it's likely to be, I'll ask my user to look for it, next time this happens. ... View more

Many thanks Debbie. On a separate (but related) topic, is there a way to guarantee that the user will have full access rights to whichever folder he chooses when running my InstallShield setup.exe file? I've assumed that if the user opts to install for "Me Only" he / she would be granted full rights to their chosen installation folder but that doesn't always seem to hold true. Is there anything I can stipulate when I'm building the setup.exe file that will guarantee this? ... View more

Thanks again Jonathan - BTW.... jonathanqis wrote: Have you selected 'Cache MSI Locally' from the Releases Setup.exe tab ? If so, have you chosen a location for it that is restricted access or non-exsistant on their system. What would you recommend as a suitable folder? My initial thoughts were either to pick the user's personal folder or maybe the Windows 'temp' folder. But on my system, neither of those folders seem to have any rights set for "Trusted Installer". I suppose I should choose a folder that InstallShield will have access to but I don't know what would be a reliable choice. 😞 ... View more

Thanks for the prompt reply Jonathan. The only thing I can find which looks similar to what you descibed is under Releases->SingleImage. There's an entry called Cache Web Download which allows me to set a local cache path (currently set to [WindowsFolder]Download Installations. That does seem to match my problem but I'm guessing it isn't exactly what you meant. My installation package builds a conventional setup.exe file. It doesn't download anything from the web AFAIK. Seems like I'm in the right region but should I be looking somewhere else? [Edit...] Ah - I've just realised what must be happening.! These particular customers must be running the setup file directly from our server instead of downloading it locally! I'll try modifying that setting Jonathan and see if it solves the problem. Thanks for the tip.:cool: ... View more

Thanks for the suggestion Debbie. It worked (if a little strangely). Whenever I've needed to do this kind of thing in the past, I've tended to apply the condition to a feature, rather than to individual components. For example, if I wanted to install some components only on Windows Vista or above I'd create a new feature called (say) InstallVistaOrHigher and I'd set it to check for the condition VersionNT>599. I'd then just place any relevant components into that feature. But VersionNT64 doesn't seem to work that way. I need to set it on the individual components rather than the feature. Does that make any sense to you? It did work but it's a departure from what I'm used to, so I found it a bit confusing. ... View more

I figured it out - though I have to say with very little help from the InstallShield documentation. I found this web page which explained about using Setup Types. In case anyone else needs this, the information shown in the above link is extremely misleading. It implies that Setup Types should be an entry in InstallShield's (left-hand side) view list (along with 'System Configureation' / 'Behaviour and Logic' etc). In fact that's wrong. SetupType (note, all one word and without an 's' on the end) is in fact one of the available UI dialogs. Select Dialogs->SetupType->Behavior. In the dialog's Control Name list, select the 'Next' pushbutton entry. Notice that when the user presses 'Next' (at run time) he will modify the program's Install Level, depending on whether he selects Typical, Minimal or Custom. This affects which features get installed because each feature only gets installed if its its own distinct install level is lower than the program's current install level. All very confusing (as with anything else to do with InstallShield) !!! 😞 ... View more

Thanks Debbie. Sorry for the delay in replying. For some reason I couldn't see that page in Internet Explorer. I've needed to use Safari to see it... :confused: One other thing I need to do is to set up an optional "file association" (i.e. when the user clicks files with a certain extension they'll launch my app). Is there a KB article which explains that? ... View more

Great reply Cary, thanks! This morning I've been looking at the Help file info for creating InstallScript files. I've gathered that I need to start by adding a file to my project called "Setup.nul" Unfortunately, the Help info doesn't say where exactly I need to add the file. Can I add it to any component or do I need to create a component specially for it? And would it benefit from having its own feature? Or to put it another way.... once I've created a Setup.nul file, how will the InstallScript viewer know about it and how will it know where to find it? ... View more