Aaron Stebner posted some sample code to detect whether the .NET Framework 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0 were installed and at what service pack level they are. Basically, the .NET Framework installation writes a common, version-specific registry key in the following location along with an SP level registry value. The sample below for an English (United States)...

Previously I discussed conceptually how to extract files from a patch, mentioning that the transforms contained within patches are stored as sub-storages and the cabinets that contain the files are stored as sub-streams. I've had a tool for a while that extracts the transforms and cabinets from a .msp file and wanted to share the slightly modified ...

Back in January 2005, a former employee and friend of mine, Nick Parker, was awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for his contributions to the same site where I haunted and got my MVP shortly before I joined Microsoft. He and another former employee and friend helped start and currently serve on the board of&n...

After both Verizon Wireless first and second tier support, and even Palm support told me that the Palm Treo 700w must not support stereo - which, of course, doesn't sound conclusive - I heard from both internal distribution lists and external forums that the Treo does, in fact, support stereo sound and that some headsets - like the one I was recomm...

If you want to open a .msp file with the Windows Installer APIs, you must pass to the function, or (110) is returned. Below is the definition of both and from msiquery.h in the Windows Installer SDK.#define MSIDBOPEN_READONLY (LPCTSTR)0#define MSIDBOPEN_PATCHFILE 32/sizeof(*MSIDBOPEN_READONLY) is defined as when is defined, which is defined ...

I previously mentioned some problems I was having with the Palm Treo 700w and that these were not isolated issues. After several calls and more research I have a few updates.A lot of referrals came in from a thread about the SMS text messaging issue for the Palm Treo 700w on the Verizon network. Text messages are sent to tell Pocket Outlook to syn...

Code pages describe a character set. In MSI Databases and Code Pages I described how Windows Installer databases use a code page for the string pool, as well that the summary information stream uses its own code page in (1) to describe strings in the summary information stream. There is a bug, however, when creating a .msp patch database from a .p...

I bought a Palm Treo 700w a short while ago and for the most part have been loving it. It combines Palm's great hardware with Microsoft Windows Mobile programming and great user interface. All this hasn't been without its problems, though.When I set up ActiveSync on the device to work withour corporate Exchange server I set the off-peak synchroniza...

Windows Installer has the ability to create administrative installations, which is a copy of the .msi database and files that have been expanded into a source directory structure. These administrative installations can easily be deployed using Active Directory group policy deployment among other things, such as creating patches since PatchWiz.dll...

A frequently asked question is about why property values in the Property table aren't formatted when the values contain properties themselves, such as:[ProductName] is copyright by [Manufacturer].The reason these property values aren't formatted is because the Value column type is simply Text, not Formatted. Other formattable column types exist, in...