Dear all! I'm trying to setup an INI file for my installer build: ../IsSABld.exe" -i "BuildConfig.ini" Unfortunately I cannot find out how to create INI file entries for "-z" parameters to overwrite MSI properties (e.g. -z "ProductName=TestProduct 0.3"). I already read the chapter "Passing Command-Line Parameters in an .ini File" but the "-z" parameter does not seem to be documented... Has anybody found out how to pass "-z" build-parameters with an INI file? Thanks a lot! Michael ... View more

Dear all! I'm facing a little dilemma... The developers of our software want me to temporarly disable the auto-repair functionality of Windows Installer on their computers… [LIST=1] Almost all of our developers have current releases of our software installed on their computers. Due to testing purposes they’d like to replace certain DLL or EXE-files to test them within a “real” environment This is where the auto-repair service pops up and reinstalls the old files…. NOTE: I already read about “deleting key-files” to disable auto-repair but I don’t want to change anything within the InstallShield project… So, here are my questions: I don’t really think that these quick and dirty file replacing practices of our developers are actually Windows Installer compliant… My problem is that I cannot tell my developers how they have to test their software as I’m not really experienced in developing Windows Software. Could anybody please give me some hints or tell me about best practices? What do you think about deleting or renaming the MSI file within C:\Windows\Installer\... to get temporarly rid of auto-repair? I’d really appreciate your help! Greetings Michael ... View more

Dear all! I'm really experiencing some strange COM Data Extraction issues... I just created a test-project with my DLL-file and all of its dependend files (all separate components). The dependent files are *.bpl files from borland. Now here's what i do: 1. After i created all the components i choose to Extract COM Data from the DLL file and everything works perfectly! 2. BUT: If i close the project, reopen it and do the above step again nothing happens. And here's the funny thing: if I delete any of the dependent files and readd it, COM Extraction works again...... Until i close the project and reopen it.... Has anybody experienced this behaviour before?? Michael ... View more

Dear all! The developers of our software want me to precompile about 20 .NET assemblies (they seem to be sure about it 🙂 . I just played around with InstallShield's ".NET Precompile Assembly" and I'm not really convinced about it... The DOS window that prompts up during the installation is pretty annoying... My main problem is that the .NET assemblies have dependencies between each other and during the precompilation they don't seem to be able to "find" each other (i get a lot of errors). As far as i understand the order of this precompilation is crucial, can anybody confirm this? I'm pretty sure that if i precompile these assemblies in the right order they will be able to find each other... Am I right that it is not possible to set the "precompilation order" of assemblies within InstallShield? Has anybody experience with Assembly Precompilation? Do you use the InstallShield feature or do you manually call a batch file which uses ngen.exe? (with a batch file i'd be able to set the order or the precompilation) Thanks for your help! Michael ... View more

Dear all! I'm really confused about key-files and updating rules... I just did the following: - Created a new Basic MSI-Project within InstallShield 2009 - Created a Component with two text-files A and B - Defined file A as key file - Created build 1.0 - Installed build 1.0 After that i did this: - Changed the content of file B (did NOT change key file A) - Created an automatic upgrade item - Created build 1.1 (as expected i get the following validation error: Val0004: The file 'B.txt' in component 'AllOtherFiles' is different from the file in the previous package, but the key file for this component did not change. As a result, the changed file will not get installed...) - Installed build 1.1 Now here's what i expect after the installation of build 1.1: File B should not have been replaced as the key file A of its component has not changed (exactly as the validation error said). BUT: File B is overwritten!! Within the log file (see attachment) i see the following, correct entry for FILE A: Won't Overwrite;Won't patch;Existing file is unversioned and unmodified - hash matches source file But, obviously MSI want to replace FILE B (but it shouldn't as far as i understand): Overwrite;Won't patch;Existing file is unversioned and unmodified - hash doesn't match source file Please help me! Am I doing something wrong creating the update 1.1? Thanks a lot for your help! Michael ... View more

Dear all! I'm running my setup.exe using "RunAs Administrator". During the installation process i need to copy some files to the actual user profile. As I'm running setup as the administrator, the "CurrentUserProfile" path seems to be the one of the administrator. Do you know a way to get the path of the current user profile? Thanks a lot! Michael ... View more

Dear all! I'm really wondering how an InstallScript Installer determines whether a software has already been installed or not! Is it possible to "simulate" an installation by just adding some registry keys? Here's what i want to do: 1. Create an InstallScript installer for the application XYZ with the ProductCode ABC. 2. Add some registry keys (I hope you can tell me which ones 🙂 3. Click on setup.exe and now the installer should recognize that the software has already been installed (even though it was not...) (What i already tried is to install the application XYZ, export the uninstall key HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/{ABC} and then reimport it on a clean system. Unfortunately the installer did not detect the installation, so there have to be some more keys...) Thank you for your help! Michael ... View more

Dear all! I'm trying to prevent the user from running setup.exe twice. I do a lot of hardware checks at the beginning of the installation. These checks are all logged into one single log-file. Now if the user starts setup.exe again the log-file gets messed up by the two running instances... Is there an easy way to prevent setup.exe from running twice? Thank you in advance for your help! Michael ... View more

Dear all! I'm trying to implement a Wait Dialog in my BASIC MSI project. The dialog should be displayed when the user clicks on a certain button. As I've already figured out i need to use SpawnWaitDialog. So here's what I did: 1. Created a "WaitDialog". 2. Created an InstallScript CustomAction "DoSomeStuff": Delay(3); MsiSetProperty(hMsi, "ActionFinished", "X"); return ERROR_SUCCESS; I noticed somewhere in this forum that this Immediate CustomAction needs to be run asynchronously so I chose "Asynchronous (Waits for exit code)" as Asynchronous (No wait for completion) does not seem to be available for InstallScript CustomActions. 3. Created a Button on an existing dialog and added the following events: DoAction--DoSomeStuff--1 SpawnWaitDialog--WaitDialog--ActionFinished="X" Now here's what I don't get: The WaitDialog appears correctly but does not disappear anymore. I did some tests without the WaitDialog and as I figured out the CustomAction is NOT beeing started... Funnily enough the CustomActions seems to be called if I click on the Cancel button of the installer (!). If anybody has already tried to implement such a Wait Dialog with InstallScript and Basic MSI I'd really appreciate his help! Michael ... View more

Dear all! I'm trying to implement a summary dialog which will be displayed at the end of the installation. Among other things this dialog should show the user whether .NET was installed or not (at the beginning of the installation). Does anybody know how I could do this? Is there maybe a property like "DotNetInstalled" or some registry key which i could query? Thanks in advance for your help! Michael ... View more