Beginning with Windows Installer 3.0 you can install multiple patches at once, i.e. in a single install transaction. To do this you pass a semicolon-delimited list of fully-qualified paths to patches to the property. Windows Installer 2.0-style patches are sequenced first in the ordered specified, but then 3.0-style patches are sequenced according...
Beginning with Windows Installer 2.0 installation developers can write installation packages that target 64-bit platforms. At first only IA64 was supported but support for AMD64 — now collectively referred to along with EM64T as x64 — was added in Windows Installer 3.0. Many questions are asked regarding how to author 64-bit packages an...
One of several apparent improvements for the new patch wrapper is better logging support. More often than not if a problem occurred while trying to install the patch it was difficult to diagnose because there was no logs for the patch installation itself. A user would have to extract the .msp file and install it using msiexec.exe and pass verbose l...
A new patch wrapper will be shipping for patches targeting the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. A lot of work went into simplifying the wrapper and removing managed code, as well as standardizing the command-line options.The previous patch wrapper for the .NET Framework 1.0 and 1.1, and Visual Studio .NET 2002 and 2003, supporte...
Sequencing Windows Installer patches is typically straight forward but when the original product install or a previous, non-superseded patch defines as 1 in the Property table a custom supersedence plan is necessary to support writing Add/Remove Program registry keys correctly with patch supersedence and sequencing in mind.
Just when you thought the series on was over, I present to you an improved plan for supporting custom supersedence so that you can ship effectively superseded patches and still support N-1 patches, which are patches that apply to the RTM or a previous Service Pack, but are produced after the SP that should supersede them and all other patches that...
I mentioned previous that patches for the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 will require Windows Installer 3.1 to be installed on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and future Windows platforms. A reader mentioned that he can't install the Windows Installer 3.1 redistributable on his checked (debug) build of Windows XP SP2. An error dialog was display...
The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, and SQL Server 2005 will soon be shipping. If you'll be installing these products and are planning on upgrading your operating system later be sure to repair the product from the Add/Remove Programs (ARP) control panel.Some components don't install on certain operating systems. Mostly notably ar...
Maybe I'm the last one to realize this, but in case I'm not I wanted to share with the rest of you.When I became I Microsoft MVP back in January 2004, I was entitled to a free MSDN Magazine subscription. I've had this before and it is a great magazine comprised of interesting, helpful articles by some very good authors. My subscription just ran out...
Like all major upgrades, Windows Installer adds features to at least each major version released. Windows Installer 2.0 added support for managed and Win32 assemblies, signed installer support, and much more over previous 1.x versions of Windows Installer. Windows Installer 3.0 added support for more robust patch sequencing, installing multiple pat...
