What if there are features that depends on certain feature to be installed first but it also requires some user inputs for successful installation. We have in total 6 features in our MSI installer, last 3 features requires first feature to be installed first , we also accept inputs from users in our installation wizard that are applied to the last 3 features but first feature is a MUST for last 3 features to be installed successfully along with the user inputs values. Any suggestions?     ... View more

A little additional information I forgot to mention: The custom action that sets the value of DataFolder is also run in the Execute sequence "After CostInitialize". I have set the action to Execute only once. I have assumed that it would always execute only in the UI sequence if I was running in full UI mode and running it in Execute was only for silent mode operation. However, in a test application I'm getting similar results when I include it in the Execute sequence but no problems at all if I exclude it from that sequence. Completely baffled here. ... View more

Does the WindowsVolume property have what you want? ... View more

Hey all - just found the "Clean Up" utility in the Tools->Options->Directory Tab -> check the Clean Up on the bottom! Have not tested it but at least it says it will do what we want it to do. Regards, Tom ... View more

Good info. For those interested, this is also how you would install a component to a requested destination from a Custom Dialog, ie; I had to copy some files to a Siebel Server. Another way rather than looking at the Directory Table is: - "Application Data"->"Files and Folders" - R-Click "Destination Computer" -> "Show Predefined Folders" and select the [CommonAppDataFolder] (CADF) - R-Click CADF and Add your folder name under it - MyData - R-Click on new folder and get the Directory Identifier - you can also rename it here to something more descriptive. For the component that you want to change - use this Identifier for the Destination of the Component. Setup the Set Property Custom Action. You can also run this CA in the Next Button of a Custom Dialog. ... View more

Hi Skolte, I appreciate the help! I'm thinking that perhaps the 0 byte files will be the solution that best matches the requirements in this case. And I agree that a new build will need to be done each time changes are made to the build environment. We were just looking for a way to not have to actually modify the project itself, which both of those solutions seem to accomplish. If you want to experiment a little more with the behavior, the situation I set up was to create a folder with two 0 byte .txt files in it, say one.txt and two.txt. I also placed an empty sub folder in it. Then I created a component that dynamically linked to the top folder and specified in the dynamic link dialog box to include *.*. That worked fine and, on the target machine, I got both one.txt and two.txt and the empty folder (as I had expected). Then I went back to the dynamic link dialog box and, in the "exclude files with this pattern" area, I entered one.txt . What I then got on the target machine was the file two.txt but the empty folder wasn't created. What I had expected was to see two.txt and the empty folder since the exclusion was only for one.txt. Thanks again - you've been very helpful on a couple of issues I've had. ... View more

No, I don't think there is any way to display a custom dialog before the InstallShield prerequisites are installed. The prerequisite UI is controlled by the Setup.exe bootstrap, and most aspects of it are not customizable. (There are ways to tweak the strings on the prerequisite dialogs, but there's no way to add additional dialogs or perform tasks such as resize the dialogs.) Er, well, perhaps you could create some special custom "prerequisite" whose sole purpose is to show the special UI, and schedule that prerequisite before your other prerequisites. I'm not sure whether this would fit your requirements, or how easy it would be to implement this. Another option you may to consider is to switch to a Suite project. You would add each prerequisite package to your Suite project as a dependency package, and set up all of the conditions that help the new Suite Setup.exe bootstrap determine whether each package needs to be launched. With this approach, you have full control over the bootstrap UI, so you can incorporate your own custom UI wizard pages before things are installed. I hope that helps. ... View more

Hi SK, Thanks for the good advice. I have finally figured out what is going on. The project that we converted from IS7 has about 70 features. Many of them are configured to be non-visible. It turns out that the Display value (in the Feature table) for an invisible feature is 0 whereas the values for visible features are all greater than zero. When the list of features are displayed in either the Features view or the Setup Design view, the invisible features show up at the top of the list (value of 0). I guess this is reasonable though it seems to differ from older behavior. The problem is that if you are in either the Feature or Setup Design view and use Up to move a visible feature up the feature list, you can move it right up into the invisible group. Again, maybe that's OK. However, if you switch to the other view, the feature will only have moved up to the bottom of the invisible features. So when you look at the order of the features in this case, it's different - the visible feature you moved up to, say, the top of the invisible featues in the Setup Design view will show up at the bottom of the invisible features in the Feature view. I don't think this behavior is intuitive or what anyone would expect. Once you know how it works you can deal with it but it sure threw me for a loop for quite awhile. Thanks again for all your help! ... View more

I found the issue today and thought I'd share it with others. The problem appears to be that I did not use the Release Wizard when I was specifying the languages that I wanted to filter by in a release. Instead I used the Releases view and entered the language(s) that I wanted to include in a release in the Data Languages field of the property sheet. To me, this seems to be an appropriate way to specify the language(s). However, it does not work. If you check the SupportedLanguagesData field in the ISRelease table you'll see that no value is entered. However, if you use the Release Wizard to define the release and, in the Filtering dialog, you check the "Filter Application Data based on the following languages" checkbox and then check the appropriate language(s), it all works as you'd expect. You can also confirm that the SupportedLanguagesData field in the ISRelease table now has a value in it. To me this seems a bit like a bug in that one shouldn't have to use the Wizard and you'd think there'd be a way in the Releases view to accomplish the same behavior that you get by using the Wizard. Perhaps there is and I just haven't found it but so far the only way I've seen to filter by language is to either edit the ISRelease table directly or to use the Wizard. ... View more