Hello Johan, Firstly, thanks for responding back. I apologize for the delayed response. I thought i would also get in touch with InstallShield. I am posting below my questions and the response i got from InstallShield. Hopefully people should benefit from this. Question Hello, We are using: Install Shield Premier Edition 2008 Basic msi project All flavors of windows targeted. We use a single setup.exe for both fresh install and minor upgrades (service packs) Our project uses a large number of files. As part of our project, we use multiple components with dynamic file linking setup. These components even have subfolders linked dynamically. I have done my fair amount of research on the web and each and every single post I have read states that the Component GUIDs change between every build of your product, if you do **not** point to your previous msi package(Releases view) when the installer built. However we have released several versions of our product without referencing our previous msi package. If all these posts were true, then the component GUIDs should have changed across releases and all our upgrades should have failed. Upon doing a MSI package diff of the msi's released across several versions, I observe the following: i) None of the component GUIDs has changed. ii) What has consistently changed is the Directory_ and Keypath column. So here are my questions: 1) For dynamic file linking, under what circumstances does the Component GUID change between installer builds? 2) What is the algorithm used by Install Shield to generate component GUIDs for dynamic file links? 3) What is the effect of Directory_ and Keypath column values changing across releases on upgrades? Remember we have **never** pointed our package to the previous msi package in any of our release and still the upgrades continue to work. How is this possible as the keypaths have changed? 4) This is the most important question of all We support upgrades from the last two versions: 4.5 and 4.6. We are currently at 5.0 Should i now start pointing my current version of my package to the last released msi, which is 4.6? What is the recommended approach here? Remember, i have not pointed either of 4.5 or 4.6 to their respective previous packages when they were built. I have just 3 more days to get answers to all of this. Any help would be very much appreciated. Response from InstallShield Thank You for contacting Flexera Software Technical Support. My name is Alpesh and I will be assisting you with this support incident. I understand that you have some questions about the Dynamic File Links. Please find answers to your questions here -- 1.) The Component GUID changes when you change the dynamic file link to point to a different folder. Ideally, during subsequent builds, the file keys for the files changes. But if you use the Previous Package field, then it will keep the file keys also in sync with the previous release. 2.) This would be Intellectual Property, but IS generates a different component for every PE file and subfolders. 3.) The Directory identifiers and File Keys are changing, but they are pointing to the same directory and same file. Hence, it is not causing the upgrade to fail. 4.) Ideally each package should point to a previous package. But if you are starting now, point to the latest package that is out right now. Also the Dynamic File link functionality has been improved upon with every IS release. I hope the information helps you. This is inline with what your observations have been. Thanks, Kiran Hegde ... View more

Check is the 'Always Overwrite' tag is set for these files. If it is it assigns a version of 255.255.65534 to the file(s). This would cause the Validaiton to see it as a versioned file. Hence the need for the language designation. ... View more