During some operations upgrades internally, a problem arose on some machines where a patch for the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 would fail to install. I was looped into the thread to diagnose the issue and found that the Windows Installer package and the patch package were both missing from the installer cache. Since a .msp file is just a container...
The upcoming Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 can take a while to install and can require a lot of disk installed, and even more disk space while installing the patch. You can save a little of both by disabling the Windows Installer patch caching feature. Before doing so, understand that this patch cache contains copies of the files that were repl...
SQL expression support is easy to use when modifying Windows Installer packages, but there is one major drawback that continues to cause problems: you can't escape single quotation marks in Windows Installer SQL expressions. Consider the following sample code: TCHAR szSQL[MAX_SQL];LPCTSTR pszExample = TEXT("Heath 'ClubStew' Stewart");_stprintf_s(sz...
I am often asked why file changes don't appear in the handy Windows Installer tool, Orca. When people open an .msp patch package in Orca, they will likely see something like the following: As described in What's in a Patch, a patch package contains transforms and, optionally, tables. Currently, Windows Installer-supported tables include the MsiPa...
Yesterday, the Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework was released. This is comprised of the .NET Framework 2.0 plus Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, and the Windows Communication Foundation. This release is intended to increase the scope of the original base class library, so while the 2.0 BCL is included this whole release is 3...
I recently added the Live Search Box to my blog, as you can see in the top right corner. This handy AJAX-enabled control allows you to use Live Search's powerful features, and to search other Windows Installer sites using a macro I created a while back. You can see the result in the screenshot below, or - better yet - just give it a try. It works i...
