March 2006

Opening Patch Files when Compiled for Unicode

Heath Stewart March 31, 2006 Mar 31, 2006 03/31/06

If you want to open a .msp file with the Windows Installer APIs, you must pass MSIDBOPEN_PATCHFILE to the MsiOpenDatabase function, or ERROR_OPEN_FAILED (110) is returned. Below is the definition of both MSIDBOPEN_PATCHFILE and MSIDBOPEN_READONLY from msiquery.h in the Windows Installer SDK.#define MSIDBOPEN_READONLY (LPCTSTR)0#define ...

Update on Problems with the Palm Treo 700w

Heath Stewart March 29, 2006 Mar 29, 2006 03/29/06

I previously mentioned some problems I was having with the Palm Treo 700w and that these were not isolated issues. After several calls and more research I have a few updates.A lot of referrals came in from a thread about the SMS text messaging issue for the Palm Treo 700w on the Verizon network. Text messages are sent to tell Pocket Outlook ...

Specifying the Code Page for Patch Tables

Heath Stewart March 27, 2006 Mar 27, 2006 03/27/06

Code pages describe a character set. In MSI Databases and Code Pages I described how Windows Installer databases use a code page for the string pool, as well that the summary information stream uses its own code page in PID_CODEPAGE (1) to describe strings in the summary information stream. There is a bug, however, when creating a .msp patch ...

Problems with the Palm Treo 700w

Heath Stewart March 26, 2006 Mar 26, 2006 03/26/06

I bought a Palm Treo 700w a short while ago and for the most part have been loving it. It combines Palm's great hardware with Microsoft Windows Mobile programming and great user interface. All this hasn't been without its problems, though.When I set up ActiveSync on the device to work withour corporate Exchange server I set the off-peak ...

Identifying Administrative Installation Patches

Heath Stewart March 24, 2006 Mar 24, 2006 03/24/06

Windows Installer has the ability to create administrative installations, which is a copy of the .msi database and files that have been expanded into a source directory structure. These administrative installations can easily be deployed using Active Directory group policy deployment among other things, such as creating patches since ...

Formatting Properties

Heath Stewart March 21, 2006 Mar 21, 2006 03/21/06

A frequently asked question is about why property values in the Property table aren't formatted when the values contain properties themselves, such as:[ProductName] is copyright by [Manufacturer].The reason these property values aren't formatted is because the Value column type is simply Text, not Formatted. Other formattable column types ...

Building with Wix.Targets

Heath Stewart March 15, 2006 Mar 15, 2006 03/15/06

I've been away for a while working on a high priority issue that I'll discuss in detail soon, as well as investigating a common issue regarding 32- and 64-bit installations about which I'll write a new series of posts. For much of that work I've been using Windows Installer XML, or WIX, which allows me to build Windows Installer packages, ...

Visual Studio Setup

March 2006 - Visual Studio Setup