Visual Studio Setup
Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products
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Suggestions for Future Posts
In an effort to present to the community information about which you're interested, please suggest topics for future posts by adding your comments. While my job deals more with Windows Installer — more specifically setup and deployment of the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and other Developer Division products — my other interests deal with .NET development, specifically in the areas of interoperability.I have compiled a list of many of my articles so see if one of those articles relates to your topic. If so, please feel free to comment on those articles but note that some of those sites don't alert m...
Articles
Below is a list of articles I've written over the years. If you have ideas within the scope of Windows Installer, Microsoft .NET, COM, COM interoperability with .NET, or other related topics please add your comments to this post.
Working with ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT
Continuing the series on the perils and necessity of , it's time to explain one solution for having your cake an eating it too.If you have determined that you need to define in your product RTM, remember that your product nor patches will not show up in the Add/Remove Programs (ARP) control panel unless you write entries for each to the registry yourself. But because obsolescing, superseding, or removing a patch removes it from the view before the reinstallation of your product, those registry keys will never be removed because they've been orphaned.To define ARP keys for your patch, you should add them to a new...
Major Upgrade Patches
A question was asked in Aaron Stebner's blog about major upgrades via MSP patch files with sequencing information. I would like to take this opportunity — at Aaron's request — to explain a few guidelines regarding major upgrades in Windows Installer.Basically, a major upgrade is an update to a product that changes all of the , , and package code (the latter should always change for any update). A major upgrade — unlike small or minor updates — can be installed either by patching the product or installing a new product MSI. In order to remove the product or certain features of the existing ...
Script Repository
If you're using Windows Script to perform a lot of everyday functions or even need a one-use script to automate a batch process there's a great resource available on the web on our TechNet site: The Script Center Script Repository. There are hundreds of example scripts available from managing Active Directory to managing Office documents and applications. Most scripts are written in VBScript, but you can find other samples in other languages from the Scripting Languages homepage. It's been around for a while but is worth the extra mention.
More Photos from Mt. Rainier
Jens Häupel, a developer evangelist for Microsoft Germany, recently attended (English translation) a Tech Conference here in Seattle and had a chance to visit and take photographs — very nice photographs — at Mt. Rainier. The views around Microsoft really are very beautiful.On that note, the Developer Division Customer Product-lifecycle Experience (DDCPX) team is still hiring for Software Design Engineers (SDEs), Software Design Engineers in Test (SDETs), and Program Managers (PMs)! Help drive installation and serviceability of the next generation of developer tools.
A Reason for ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT
Last week I blogged about how is dangerous, but there are reasons for using it. Two reasons is defined in the product MSIs for the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 is to localize the Add/Remove Programs (ARP) entries, and to change certain registry values so that the external UI handler is invoked to handle the requested operation.Using previous versions of Windows Installer, ARP keys were written simply using the Registry table but weren't used, of course, if was set to 1. Patch information wasn't written to the registry so patches were responsible for adding entries to the Registry table if so desir...
Deploying Crystal Reports with your Managed Application
A common problem I see in various developer forums is trying to build an installation package with the Crystal Reports merge modules or running an application with Crystal Reports on another machine is that the registration code is often forgotten. You may see an error like the following on another machine where Crystal Reports has not been registered:To make sure this doesn't happen, be sure to register Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET when opening a report file, for example, and enter the registration code you'll get back from Crystal Decisions' registration page into regwiz.msm (2002) or Crystal_regwiz20...
My One-year Anniversary
Today is my one-year anniversary here at Microsoft and I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of great people and on great projects. I've seen two betas of the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 and a myriad of Community Technology Previews (CTPs) go out the door, improved some of the patching technology for older releases as well as help prepare for the up-coming release of .NET 2.0 and VS 2005. I've also worked with lots of other teams outside of Developer Division during my work with Windows Script; and also to improve our patch build technology with other sustained engineering groups l...