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 which use...
A lot of customers have recently started seeing the following errors, all stating in various ways that Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 failed to install. You may also see this when attempting to install other updates on top of .NET 2.0 SP1. The error you will see depends on how you are applying updates. If you are installing .NET 2.0 SP...
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 requi...
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 supporte...
For my Windows Installer PowerShell Extensions, I've been simplifying some of the use cases and adding additional formats. One thing I wanted to do was display source list information in a table and group either by the attached ProductCode or PatchCode properties. The format-table cmdlet doesn't support multiple properties and doesn't appear to all...
While attempting to install Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008, you may get a prompt for source that looks like the following screenshot. This problem commonly occurs if you have not installed one or more of the features Visual Basic, Visual C++, or Visual C# when installing Visual Studio 2008 (VS2008). If you have your VS...
Yesterday I described an issue when adding new components to existing, not-installed (absent) features the feature tree is installed. This can lead to prompts for source or failed installations. One workaround is to add new, top-level hidden features. This works well unless new resources have a dependency on the older resources installed by the wou...
As Developer Division starts to ship patches for the Visual Studio 2008, some users are being prompted for installation source media. This is a resulting of Windows Installer needing the original source files if, for example, files are missing from disk when you repair your product or backup files are not available during patch install. If you are ...
Debugging custom actions isn't exactly the easiest action to do; Windows Installer spawns separate processes - remoting servers - to run in-process custom actions. Any opportunity to diagnose issues without debugging can be helpful.For example, an issue that comes up from time to time is leaked handles. A Windows Installer debug log might show some...
Binder variables in WiX are variables that are resolved, coincidentally, at bind time. This is when the linker, light.exe, collects file information, assigns auto-GUIDs, and generates the output packages among other things. There are binder variables for all versioned binaries, and binder variables specific to both managed and native assemblies or ...
