Showing archive results for 2007

Aug 13, 2007
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WiX v3 Patching Improvements

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

In last week's release some changes to patching with WiX were made with more exciting changes to come. Peter Marcu has implemented some changes he'll talk more about on his blog, but suffice to say has reduced the number of commands and command line arguments required to build a patch.I've added some documentation for the new the patch build system...

InstallationWiX
Aug 10, 2007
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No Environment Change Notification when Reboot Required

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

The documentation for the WriteEnvironmentStrings action states, Note that environment variables do not change for the installation in progress when either the WriteEnvironmentStrings action or RemoveEnvironmentStrings action are run. On Windows 2000, this information is stored in the registry and a message is sent to notify the system of chan...

InstallationDevelopment
Jul 13, 2007
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KB928365 for MS07-040 Leaves Some Managed Applications Sluggish

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

After installing Security Update KB928365 for the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to fix MS07-040, some users are noticing some managed applications - especially those developed using the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) - are running sluggish.The apparent problem is that native images, which are assemblies already compiled to native code, do not ...

InstallationNewsSecurity
Jul 12, 2007
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Installing to TARGETDIR

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

The TARGETDIR property, paired with the SourceDir property in the Directory table, determines the root directory into which all files are copied unless otherwise located. During an administrative installation when all files are extracted the TARGETDIR, this is the only root directory on the file system. The directory structure in the Directory tabl...

InstallationCustom Actions
Jul 12, 2007
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Immediate Custom Actions Always Impersonate

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

Windows Installer is a client/server application. When you install a package using msiexec.exe - which is executed by default in response to shell verbs such as Install - or APIs like MsiInstallProduct the package is initially processed under the user's credentials. This means, of course, that in over-the-shoulder elevation when administrative cred...

InstallationCustom ActionsUAC
Jun 28, 2007
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Unchanged Files Break Patch Uninstall

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

I've discussed a couple different reasons that Windows Installer 3.0-style patches - those with the MsiPatchMetadata table in the patch package itself - might not be uninstallable. I explained another reason in a discussion about the new patch build support in Windows Installer XML (WiX) v3 recently, describing why unchanged files should not be upd...

InstallationVisual StudioVS2005SP1
Jun 22, 2007
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Uninstallable Patches that are not Uninstallable

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

Patching with Windows Installer is the act of applying a pair of transforms in a patch to a Windows Installer product, then repairing that product. Any changes made in the transforms affect the aggregate view that Windows Installer reinstalls. This is displayed in the diagram below, where the bottom layer is the components in the product MSI, the s...

InstallationUninstall
Jun 16, 2007
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Windows Live Writer Plugin for MSDN URLs

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

I have posted a Windows Live Writer plugin I wrote to aide posting URLs to MSDN, simply named Paste MSDN URL. It removes, if present, the culture in the URL so that when a reader clicks the link he or she sees the content on MSDN in their preferred language if a translation is available.So, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa372866.aspx&nbs...

News
May 31, 2007
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Windows Installer Errors 2738 and 2739 with Script Custom Actions

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

Windows Script custom actions should be avoided. They are difficult to debug, get blocked by virus scanners, and are far more susceptible to machine state than native custom actions. That is indicated by Windows Installer error messages 2738 and 2739, which read: As some people have found, re-registering the runtime libraries vbscript.dll and jsc...

InstallationCustom ActionsScript
May 18, 2007
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WiX Extension for PowerShell Snap-ins

Heath Stewart
Heath Stewart

To write an installer for your PowerShell snap-in, the PowerShell documentation instructs you to extend the PSSnapIn or CustomPSSnapIn class. When you add your snap-in assembly to the Custom Action view in a Windows Installer Project in Visual Studio, the InstallerClass property should be set to True and your installer class will be run when the Wi...

InstallationWiXPowerShell