Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

2006 - Page 4 of 8 - Visual Studio Setup

Determine if the Custom Action Function is Exported

August 14, 2006 Aug 14, 2006 08/14/06
Heath Stewart
Another reason a custom action may not run is because the custom action function isn't exported. This may not be common in most patch build systems, but could arise during authoring or if a binary wasn't updated in the Binary table. You should expect to find a log line similar to the following.MSI (s) (1C:C4) [16:57:23:258]: Doing action: ...

Been Busy on Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1

August 14, 2006 Aug 14, 2006 08/14/06
Heath Stewart
I've been away for a while, though I've barely left the Microsoft campus. As we prepare for Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, I've been very busy with issues: especially an issue with the size of the patch. Visual Studio is probably the biggest product (in terms of the number of files at least; I do know of a couple products using ...

Virtual PC 2004 SP1 Now Free

July 12, 2006 Jul 12, 2006 07/12/06
Heath Stewart
Earlier today, Microsoft announced that Virtual PC 2004 SP1 is now free to download, and that Virtual PC 2007 will be free when released. Earlier this year Virtual Server 2005 R2 was made available for free download as well.Virtualization is great when testing Windows Installer packages and patches for installation and maintenance scenarios. I...

Why a Custom Action May Not Run

July 11, 2006 Jul 11, 2006 07/11/06
Heath Stewart
When it appears that a custom action in your install package or patch isn't executing, you have to consider a couple of reasons. If the action has a condition in the Condition column of InstallUISequence table, the InstallExecuteSequence table, or any of the other sequence tables, the condition may have evaluated to False. In a verbose log ...

Blank Dialogs for .NET Framework 2.0 Patches

June 29, 2006 Jun 29, 2006 06/29/06
Heath Stewart
When you download a patch for .NET Framework 2.0 and double-click to install it, you'll find that the dialog is missing some text as in the example below. (image) This is due, in part, to a bug in Windows Installer when the ProductLanguage property is 0 in the Property table. Windows Installer contains localized string tables for some ...

Biggest Donation in History

June 26, 2006 Jun 26, 2006 06/26/06
Heath Stewart
I normally try to refrain from posting content not related to the topics covered by this blog, but this news is too wonderful to pass up.Warren Buffett - second richest person in the world after Bill Gates - is giving roughly 83% of his stock in Berkshire, which is currently about $31 billion, to the Bill and Melinda Gates ...

Windows Installer SDK Tools and UAC Prompts

June 23, 2006 Jun 23, 2006 06/23/06
Heath Stewart
When using the tools from the Windows Installer SDK you might see the following dialog on Windows Vista. (image) Windows Installer tools like msidb.exe shown here, msicert.exe, msifiler.exe, msiinfo.exe, msimerg.exe, msimsp.exe, msistuff.exe, msitran.exe, and wilogutl.exe use Windows Installer file functions. Msizap.exe is the only tool that ...

Find the Product

June 21, 2006 Jun 21, 2006 06/21/06
Heath Stewart
The Windows SDK Team instructs users how to uninstall older Platform SDK installations without the original source installation media. As part of their instructions, they write, RemoveProgram FilesMicrosoft SDK folder This is the painful part: Find all .msi that are releated to the February 2003 release in %windir%installer from the cmd ...

Cumulative Service Packs with MinorUpdateTargetRTM

June 14, 2006 Jun 14, 2006 06/14/06
Heath Stewart
Microsoft has had a long-standing policy of providing cumulative service packs - service packs that can be installed for a product whether a previous service pack for that product has been installed or not. Prior to the release of Windows Installer 3.1, minor upgrades which typically serve as service packs had to contain a pair of transforms...

Be Careful or Even Avoid Using Type 35 Custom Actions

June 14, 2006 Jun 14, 2006 06/14/06
Heath Stewart
My blog was pretty quiet for a while because of a problem we ran into regarding Windows Installer type 35 custom actions. These custom actions change the target location for a directory.Developer Division uses type 35 custom actions for vertical integration with other editions of our Visual Studio products, so that installing products with ...