I have a written a setup script for my own Windows EXE using InstallShield Premium 2012. My EXE, however, ultimately relies on the presence components provided by a Microsoft EXE called AccessDatabaseEngine.exe.
In order to run this AccessDatabaseEngine.exe executable with my installation, I added it as an embedded binary resource then used the Custom Action Wizard to launch AccessDatabaseEngine.exe as "Deferred Execution in System Context" as an "After PublishFeatures" Install Exec Sequence. This worked as expected: The AccessDatabaseEngine.exe launches after my Setup completes most of its work.
However, once I see the UI for the AccessDatabaseEngine.exe and acknowledge its UI prompts, I see "Error 1500", which states that another installation is in progress.
I understand that two MSI packages cannot be running at the same time unless you tweak the registry to allow it, which I do not want to do on my customers' workstations, which are Windows 7 32-bit machines.
I would like to successfully implement one of these options:
OPTION ONE: Have the user launch my Setup.exe program, which will at some point launch the Microsoft AccessDatabaseEngine.exe without generating any error message. I just don't know how to do that without causing the Error 1500 to appear...
OPTION TWO: If it's possible to somehow wrap my Setup.exe along with Microsoft's AccessDatabaseEngine.exe into a single EXE, then I could provide my end users with that single EXE and it would first execute the embedded Setup.exe and, once that's done, it would execute AccessDatabaseEngine.exe.
I realize that I could implement OPTION TWO as a .bat (batch) file, but I want to deliver only a single EXE to my end users and have that single EXE install everything needed for my software to operate properly.
Any ideas?
What you describe here is exactly what InstallShield's prerequisites are designed for. Launch the prerequisite editor from the Tools menu and add files, command lines, and conditions that carry, install, and detect the installed footprint of the AccessDatabaseEngine.exe; then use the redistributables view to include that new prerequisite in your project.
Once you've done this correctly, InstallShield's setup launcher will check to see if the prerequisite footprint is present, and, if not, it will run the prerequisite as described. Since this is done before it launches the main .msi file, it avoids having two .msi files installing at the same time.
See Defining InstallShield Prerequisites, Creating an InstallShield Prerequisite, and Setting Installation Conditions for an InstallShield Prerequisite in the help for more details. For defining where these end up in your built installer, see Specifying the Run-Time Location for InstallShield Prerequisites at the Release Level or Specifying a Run-Time Location for a Specific InstallShield Prerequisite. Note that when dependencies of a prerequisite are added, they often use the release-level setting, so unless you really want a mix of locations, you're best off specifying this in the release.
Apparently there are TWO settings that determine if a prerequisite ends up in its own, separate folder (a release folder below the folder that contains setup.exe), or if it gets embedded into a single setup.exe file.
The first setting is available in the Installation Designer under Application Data | Deliverables. Find your PRQ prerequisite listed there with a check mark, right click it, and view Properties. You will see a Build Location dropdown--one of the options is Extract From Setup.exe. That's the way mine was set.
But then there is SECOND setting, and that's in the Installation Designer's Media section, under Releases. In my project, I had a Releases root, then a PROJECT_ASSISTANT branch, then a SINGLE_EXE_IMAGE branch. I left-clicked SINGLE_EXE_IMAGE and viewed its property sheet. In that list is an entry near the bottom of the list that says Setup Prerequisite Location. Double-click the right column (where its value is listed) and you will see a selection there that also says Extract From Setup.exe.
This second setting OVERRIDES the one specified in the deliverables section, and that's why it wasn't working as specified in the prerequisite setting. That's because I was using the "Copy From Source Media" setting.
So if you have multiple prerequisites and you want all of them to be included in the setup.exe then it's okay to use the Extract From Setup.exe settings. But if you prefer to configure where the prerequisite ends up, then choose the Follow Individual Selections options in the Releases' Setup Prerequisites Location section and then ensure that you've selected the correct option for each of your prerequisites.
Even if others had suggested doing this in previous answers, those explanations weren't clear to me and I wasted a lot of time before ultimately discovering what's actually going on.
Related
I'm building a setup executable using Visual Studio 2015 Setup Project template.
I added an external executable in the file system of my package that the user needs to install to be able to run my program. Then, I added this package as a custom action on Commit.
I want my install package to recognize if this external executable is already installed on the user computer by looking at the registry of looking at a certain folder structure on the computer (the method to check is not defined yet).
How can I set up this kind of check for the custom actions ? I've seen that there is a Condition property when clicking on the .EXE in the Custom Actions window, but all I can find about this property is that, which does not really answers my problem.
VS setups offer a registry search, and that search will set a property name that you define (in uppercase). If the registry entry exists, meaning that you don't need to run the program, then you give the custom action a condition of NOT FOUNDREGISTRY assuming FOUNDREGISTRY is the name of the property.
Having said that, if that program is a redistributable that installs something then:
They are typically smart enough to figure out if they need to do anything or not, and that includes seeing if what's already installed is an older version, so they should run anyway because it's a newer version. So it may be best to just run it anyway.
If the executable wraps a MSI-based setup then it will fail because you can't install an MSI-based setup with a custom action in a VS MSI setup.
I've created a patch with Advanced Installer by using an old (target image) msi and the new one (upgrade image). Inspecting MSP file I've discovered that it contains both modified and completely new files. The problem is that during the installation it installs only the "added" files. Existing files are ignored. I've already tried MSIEXEC switches like:
REINSTALL=ALL
REINSTALLMODE=sumo / aums / omus etc...
UPGRADE="Yes"
IS_MINOR_UPGRADE = "1"
..in different order and combinations (i.e. "REINSTALLMODE=aums REINSTALL=ALL"), so don't reply or comment just by telling me to try REINSTALLMODE=omus or something similar.
When creating a patch there is a set of rules that need to be followed, have you checked those? Breaking one of those can lead to unexpected behavior, such as the one you are now encountering.
To check for the rules you can start with a diff between the project files, as they are standard XML ones, and check for their product code, component GUIDs, etc... For example folder synchronization is a common problem encountered when a patch is created, as this changes the component GUIDs.
For some odd reason all the core components (exe, dlls) I wanted to update were set to "Do not register this component with Windows Installer".
I suppose this is some kind of project bug, because it's very old and was migrated through different Advanced Installer versions (7, 8 and 9).
Anyway, I was not able to update my application correctly even with a fixed patch. Windows Installer kept on asking me to browse to target image msi file (cached installer of the previous version).
However not all of my customers keep those files (usually this cached files are stored in %APPDATA% folder). So I found a workaround:
I've applied "Hash files" option in order to create a MsiFileHash table
I've packed my msp patch in a bootstrapper (exe file) that starts it with the TWICE with following command-line parameters:
first time:
"myPatch.msp" /n {150F6CE2-8C12-414B-9377-F087A62E6B67} REINSTALLMODE=c /qb
second time:
"myPatch.msp" /n {150F6CE2-8C12-414B-9377-F087A62E6B67} REINSTALLMODE=dep /qb
REINSTALLMODE=c switch forces file compare algorithm based on hashes, so it doesn't require the original setup sources anymore
REINSTALLMODE=dep restores all the other missing files, files with unknown or different (from target) version
I hope this workaround will be useful to people that use MSI/MSP authoring tools other than Advanced Installer
Using Installshield 2010 and Basic MSI project.
I have an exe that was previously installed by my installer. That exe needs to be running during an installer upgrade. Is there a way to guarantee that the installer won't try shutdown the process? Basically, I would like the behavior to be : If file doesn't exist, lay it down, otherwise ignore it.
I have made the exe a key file in a component and set it 'Never Overwrite' to true. Should this give me my desired behavior ?
Never Overwrite will be used by future installers to determine if the file will be overwritten or not by other MSI packages. Basically, this attribute should have been set for the installed EXE.
A good approach is to use a file search to determine if the EXE exists. The search property can then be used to condition the new component.
Windows Installer doesn't automatically close applications, but it does show a FilesInUse dialog which offers this option to the user.
I've been looking at various different ways of making an installer (see How to create a robust, minimal installer for Windows? for details), and I've run into the same thing in a couple of them (WiX and the visual studio installer creator); there doesn't seem to be a way to say "When you build the installer, include every file matching c:\somefolder\*.xml".
I can go and select *.xml and add all the files that match to the project at once, but then if I add another .xml file to my program later, I'd need to go and add that to the installer myself.
Is this a core limitation of windows installer, that I can't just tell it "sort all the XML files in this folder out and don't bother me about them"?
WiX toolset contains an utility called Heat. It can generate the WiX authoring for you based on your needs. The output can be further transformed by XSL templates (-t switch).
Hope this helps.
InstallShield also has this ( see Dynamic File Linking ) but honestly I don't like this pattern in general. It's non-deterministic in nature. I speak from 14 years of experience when I say that if a file is added or removed from my application I want to explicitly add it or remove it from my applications installer. Any magic to automate this has always bitten me in that it takes what should have been a build time error and turns it into a run time error.
My best practice is to write some automation that compares what was available to be consume against what was consumed by the installer. The two lists must match 100% or otherwise fail the build. When the build fails you must choose to either add the file to the installer or cease to archive the file to the directory. With the right tooling, it's trivial to add a file to the installer and the result is 100% accuracy of developer intent being applied to the installer.
hii,
well i develop a setup.exe(bootstrapper) using GenerateBootstrapper.Bootstrapper to load my msi file after check and installing prerequisites.It perfectly running if i make ComponentsLocation
*) either "HomeSite" to download prerequisites from the microsoft and install.
*) or "Relative" to take the prerequisites at the same location where my application exist and install.
But in my scenario i want that when i run setup.exe(bootstrapper) it first check component in the location where my application exist and IF it's(component) is not exist there then it download them from vendor's URL(Microsoft).
Is it possible with wix v3.5???
This is not possible with the msbuild GenerateBootstrapper task.
As for the burn.exe tool in wix v3.5, it is still in development and currently undocumented. The wix.chm in the latest weekly release does not yet mention burn.exe at the time of writing.
edit: The reason that it is not possible is that it is not really useful. I imagine you have two different deployement scenarios:
the software is delivered
on a CD or DVD with all the
prerequisites included
the software is
downloaded as a zip archive and the prequisites are
omitted to minimize download time
You need to prepare two different file trees anyway in this case. So just create a different bootstrapper for each scenario.
edit2: you can also create the two different bootstrappers, then create a third setup.exe which is a simple application that determines which of the two boostrappers to launch.