Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

April 2008 - Visual Studio Setup

MSIZap is not Uninstall

April 22, 2008 Apr 22, 2008 04/22/08
Heath Stewart
The tool msizap.exe that is available in the Windows SDK and elsewhere on the web (remember to always download from a trusted source) is a powerful but dangerous tool that is often used to quickly and casually, and can leave your machine in a corrupted state if not used correctly. The same is true for the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility ...

Functional Testing of Cmdlets

April 7, 2008 Apr 7, 2008 04/7/08
Heath Stewart
While developing unit and functional tests for Windows Installer PowerShell Extensions, I needed a way to invoke cmdlets without requiring elevation on Vista. That is, of course, because running elevated has always been a bad idea unless it is required. In order to load a PowerShell snap-in, however, one must write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE which ...

Windows Installer 4.5 Beta 2 Available

April 1, 2008 Apr 1, 2008 04/1/08
Heath Stewart
The Windows Installer team released Windows Installer 4.5 Beta 2 recently. While not a lot has visibly changed since the first beta for which I provided an overview, it's important to note that a new column was added to the CustomAction table since changes to column types are not supported in a transform or patch but adding a new column is ...