First of all, bryanwolf thanks for your post back in 2008! It helped me a lot today in 2011! Our programmer was trying to start a service which was using a VC SXS runtime, which he was installing via Merge module and he kept getting an error about it which rolled the installation back. The problem was it is an older merge module for which there is no matching redistributable to be found. Our way of dealing with it (using the info in the post of bryanwolf) was to make our own prerequisite that only installed that merge module, and install it before our main installer with the service. It worked like a charm. Hope this helps someone. ... View more

in property manager: set a property, for example, MYPROPERTY to a default empty value. Add the string ;MYPROPERTY at the end of SecureCustomProperties property in the property manager. Go to dialogs, find MaintenanceType. Go to behavior find the Next button, and add the event : [MYPROPERTY] Argument 1 condition _IsMaintenance="Change" Done Go to your Custom Action and in the Install Exec Condition textbox, type MYPROPERTY=1 ... View more

ah... These command lines work on the msi that is encapsulated in your setup.exe. To give these commands to the msi through your setup.exe you need to use the /V parameter like this: setup.exe /v "/l*v c:\logs\Yourmsilog.txt" Same for uninstall. ... View more

On Basic MSI you can use Active Setup, I dont know if its possible for InstallScript projects but here goes: This is a technique for running a repair of you msi for every subsequent user that logs on the machine your msi is installed on. This repair can "fix" the user profile including files, registries and shortcuts. To implement this you need one registry key added to your installation. This article explains it all: http://www.appdeploy.com/articles/activesetup.asp hope it helps, Walt ... View more

Commandline for building logfile: install: msiexec /i "Yourmsi.msi" /l*v c:\logs\Yourmsilog.txt and uninstall: msiexec /x "Yourmsi.msi" /l*v c:\logs\Yourmsilog.txt Where c:\logs is an existing folder. If you want to run InstallShield's MSI log analyzer rename the txt file extension to wil. MSI log analyzer can be found in Installshield - Tools - MSI log analyzer Hope this helps, Walt ... View more

I am not sure if InstallShield 2008 already had a prerequisite editor, but if it does you can make your own .NET Framework 4.0 prerequisite. It can be found under Tools Menu ->Prerequisite Editor. You can make prerequisites out of msi's and Setup.exe's. All you need is to download the .NET 4.0 installer to your computer and include it in your prerequisite. Maybe add some install conditions for robustness. Check InstallShield's help on how this works. Hope this helps ... View more

You need to populate the RemoveFile table. You need two entries for each folder that remains behind after installation. One for all the folder's content with *.* wildcard and one for the folder itself. For exact info on the exact values you fill in this table: search for "RemoveFile table" in the InstallShield 2010 help file. Hope this helps ... View more

InstallShield allows you to add a major upgrade item which only detects if another version is installed. It also sets a PUBLIC property(default is ISACTIONPROP1 but you could give it another one. Always all uppercase) with a value if it does detect it.(figure1) Make sure you set Detect Only to "Yes". This happens in the installation sequence during the FindRelatedProducts action. So if there is a related product the property gets a value. You can then use that Property in a condition of an Error Custom Action which not only stops your installer it also gives a nice message to the user. (figure2) The Not Installed part of my condition example is to make sure this only happens during installation. Good luck, Walt ... View more

You could set a condition of the type "A registry key does or does not exist" For example HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0 represents office 2007 Or if you want to be more specific you could set a condition of the type "A registry entry has a specified value", and check for specific values of keys of office 2007 or 2010. Hope this helps. ... View more

hi repal.rahul Is this an InstallScript project or a basic MSI? I am not so sure if this is possible in InstallScript, but in a standard MSI you can right click on any file select properties and mark the checkbox "Self Register". A better way is to extract the COM data from your dll by adding files with the component wizard or by right clicking the file directly and selecting "Extract Com Information" Another way is to always re-extract COM data at build time. I hope this helps Walter ... View more

A bit of a nooby mistake on my part John. You can only place strings in properties, and that value was an integer(7), so you need to change the vbscript a bit. This should do it. Temp=msgbox ("This will perform an upgrade and uninstall your previous version." & vbCrLf & "Hit Yes if OK, click No to cancel installation", vbYesNo , "Upgrade Detected") Session.Property("UNINSTALLPREVIOUS")=cStr(Temp) And you're welcome. I've been finding information on this forum for quite a while now, and I thought I should contribute a bit. 🙂 ... View more

My guess is that data.abs never overwrites because it gets changed by the application after installation and Windows installer sees it as user data which it never removes. To override this default behavior you have to populate the removeFile table to forcibly remove that file during installation. Type RemoveFile table in InstallShield help search for more info. Your minor version increase trick (also known as a minor upgrade) should work for applying this installation. To override that message "Another version of your installation exists...." Install your msi with the following commandline. msiexec /fvomus "msiname.msi" again check in the help to see what /fvomus means good luck Walt ... View more

John, To add a vbscript custom action go to Custom Actions and Sequences, right click on Custom Actions and select New VBScript -> stored in Custom action. Name this custom Action whatever you want.I name it MSGboxYESNO. You have two tabs in the right pane of your screen. One is Common where you configure all the custom action settings and one is Script where you just dump your script in. I filled in the values I mentioned in the common tab and made a screenshot. Script tab just contains the script. Oh yeah I also changed the condition to "Not Installed AND FOUNDUPGRADE". This makes sure that the custom action only takes place during Installation. ... View more

I am not exactly sure what you want to do so here are some questions for clarification: Is it the case that you would want the two application versions to reside side by side? Or is the scenario that you want nothing to be installed if the user says don't Upgrade. The first case is quite complex to achieve as you would have to make sure that no conflicts occur between the two versions if installed on the same system. The second case is simpler but still requires some "fiddling". Here are the steps to get it done: 1. Use a System Search to detect if your previous application is installed. You can check for its productCode, registry keys, files etc. Any check that is unique to your installation is good. Store this in a PUBLIC property called for example FOUNDUPGRADE. Make sure that FOUNDUPGRADE is not located in your property manager table, if it is make sure its empty (not 0 value but really empty). Type System Search in Installshield help for more info. 2. You then make a simple vbscript custom action that gets executed after the SystemSearch action but before the launchcondition action and has the condition FOUNDUPGRADE. Set it in the Install UI sequence and it should be executed immediately (custom action settingsin InstallShield IDE) 3. vb script should look like this: Session.Property("UNINSTALLPREVIOUS")=msgbox ("This will perform an upgrade and uninstall your previous version. Hit Yes if OK, click No to cancel installation", vbYesNo, "Upgrade Detected") 4. The final step is set a Launch Condition that checks if UNINSTALLPREVIOUS=7 (that is the no return value) and then gives a nice message to the user. See the attached image for clarification on this step. good luck Walt ... View more

you need to do a system search for a file or registry key that get installed by active directory and store this in a Public property say MYSEARCHPROP. You can use this in a condition like this: if MYSEARCHPROP then ... This works because MYSEARCHPROP is empty if the search returns no results. ... View more