Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

December 2005 - Visual Studio Setup

Where's Msi.lib?

December 15, 2005 Dec 15, 2005 12/15/05
Heath Stewart
If you're developing custom actions for Windows Installer or a bootstrapper in Visual Studio 2005, or utilizing the resiliency and install-on-demand features of Windows Installer in your product developed in Visual Studio 2005, you might get link errors for Windows Installer functions. Msi.lib was not included for x86 in the Platform SDK ...

Diagnosing Installation Errors

December 14, 2005 Dec 14, 2005 12/14/05
Heath Stewart
When problems occur when installing, repairing or patching, or uninstalling a product using Windows Installer technology, you need to be able to figure out what happened and why it happened. Dialogs that occur when the user interface is displayed can be helpful sometimes, but many times you need to look at a log to determine the exact cause of...

InstallSite.org

December 14, 2005 Dec 14, 2005 12/14/05
Heath Stewart
Looking through my referrals for common queries that lead people to my blogs, I noticed several recently from http://www.installsite.org/ and was pleased to see this blog listed in Stefan's related blogs. InstallSite.org has been run by Stefan Krueger for many years, dating back to when Windows Installer 1.0 was released when I happened ...

Resolving Prompts for Source

December 2, 2005 Dec 2, 2005 12/2/05
Heath Stewart
When discussing the Windows Installer cache, I mentioned how cabinet streams are stripped from the .msi file when the Windows Installer package is cached, and how this is a contributing factor to prompts for source. A prompt for source will occur when repairing or patching a product if the source for a file to reinstalled is not present. This ...