I eventually figured this one out. After banging my head against the keyboard for a day or so, the key to the solution finally popped out at me from the documentation. ServiceInstall entries are not so much associated with a component, but rather with that component's key file. If you create the component yourself instead of using the wizard, you have to remember to mark a file in that component as the key file, or the InstallServices action won't have anything to key off of. Hopefully, the solution makes a bigger impression in my head than did the keyboard so I don't forget to set a key file for every component from now on. ... View more

The "other way" to do it would be to duplicate the entire site configuration under two different components, and then condition those components based on VersionNT64. I don't want to duplicate anything for maintenance reasons. That said, the team has decided to take advice from a talk from Richard Campbell entitled "Ten Web Performance Tuning Tricks in 60 Minutes" wherein he recommends using all 32-bit web apps running on a 64bit OS, so that terminated my investigation into this now non-issue. You know in New England we say "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes." Sometimes at work I feel like if I run into a technical obstacle, I should just wait for the requirements to change. 😛 That said, if anyone has another solution, please suggest away. Someone down the line might want to ignore Campbell's advice and do this themselves, so the conversation is still valid. ... View more

If your applications and app pools exist and you want them to be re-created, then you should write a custom action to delete them before they are created by the InstallShield custom action. If they don't exist and they're not being created, then the InstallShield custom actions probably aren't being executed. Check the install log to figure out why. ... View more

Try this: Create a new test project and put all driver package related files into a single component. Mark 'This component includes a device driver' at the advanced settings of the component. If you still have trouble post the installation log and some more information about your system and device. ... View more

That was my first thought but that didn't work either. I also thought that switching to a different view then back to the dialogs view would prompt a reload of related tables but that didn't work either. ... View more

okay, i went over my course material and was reminded of the MsiProcessMessage api, which can be used to throw these errors from a CA. All set! Life is good! ... View more

Glad i'm not alone in my confusion! The funny thing is that i didn't even intend to remove that component. it was added to our previous release after we'd branched in source control, and i didn't integrate the change into the main branch. oops. thanks again! ... View more

Interested parties please follow up here. ... View more

😮 Okay, okay... I've discovered an ID 10 T error on my part. I'd still like to give Praveen some credit, as although his suggestion wasn't the exact issue, it led me in the right direction. 🙂 ... View more

Note to self: if it builds through the IDE and it doesn't build from the commandline, look really carefully at the command line. For posterity: the configuration name "release" is perfectly valid, but not properly quoting the release name: not valid. 😛 (Funny how staring at something for too long makes you blind to it's flaws.) I'll still maintain that the parsing of the command line in IsSaBld.exe should definitely be able to pick up on something like that, and if Error 5005 means that there was an error on the command line, it should be documented. Actually, no matter what it means, it should be documented. ... View more

During the initial installation, the installation of the shortcuts depends on the states of those checkboxes, but on a modify operation, changing the checkboxes doesn't affect anything. On a repair, however, this works just fine. So obviously the takeaway is that conditions of transitive components are only reevaluated when their features are being REINSTALLed. What's the best way around this? The two ideas that i'm thinking of are (1) always set REINSTALL to include a list of the names of features that contain shortcut components, or (2) gather all of the shortcut components into a single feature, always set REINSTALL toi include this feature, and add to the conditions on each one of these components a term that will make sure it's only installed if it's associated component is installed...this is faulty because component conditions can't depend on the states or actions of other components. ... View more

I also could not find any press release nor other notification indicating such a move. I certainly hope this is not the case. The amount of bugs in even the latest version of InstallShield are very concerning. Some of the bugs being encountered are several years old and have not been addressed. Others are so obvious that it appears the QA team is not doing thier job, or they don't exist... ... View more

I created another simple test project. I added the merge module upon which the module containing ServiceB depends. (let's call it ModuleA). I added ModuleB (which does nothing but install ServiceB). Again, the InstallServices action completely ignored ServiceB. I created a new merge module. I re-created the ServiceB component. It contains one file, and the InstallServices information. I removed everything from the simple test project, and added just the new merge module. InstallServices doesn't run during the Deferred Execution sequence. Why does msi hate me? 😛 ... View more

(Duplicate; follow-up of sorts [thread=195046]here[/thread].) ... View more

thanks for the tip!!! seems like i had a pile of problems, and only managed to fix one of them at a time. as indicated previously, i was extracting files to SUPPORTDIR, and they were being deleted as soon as the CA ended. this isn't helpful when extracting files for another CA to use. i ran into another problem in how I was passing MySupportDir to the Deferred CAs...because some of the logic is shared among CAs, some immediate, and some deferred, the following only worked in some cases: MySupportDir=[MySupportDir.F7043BE0_A202_4A53_BF3D_07086AC51ABC] then i changed my script to look for MySupportDir.F7043BE0_A202_4A53_BF3D_07086AC51ABC which fixed the problem for Def CAs, but broke it for Imm CAs. 😛 this is (somewhat obviously) what i meant to do all along: MySupportDir.F7043BE0_A202_4A53_BF3D_07086AC51ABC=[MySupportDir.F7043BE0_A202_4A53_BF3D_07086AC51ABC] in summary, the following are things to keep in mind when you have a merge module with def ex CAs which require support files: 1. Extract these files at the beginning of the installation to a directory that MSI logic doesn't know about 2. Make sure you are useing the " . wherever appropriate 3. Make sure you cleanup these support files at the end of the install. Also, see this thread for a simple bit of script for extracting a file from the binary table: http://community.flexerasoftware.com/showthread.php?t=170906 Thanks again Robert! ... View more