Setup Prerequisite requiring Windows Installer 3.1

[cwhitehe]

I've got a Setup Prerequisite that requires Windows Installer 3.1. I've ticked the "Requires Windows Installer engine and/or .NET Framework to be install first" box but it does not install Windows Installer 3.1 first.

My prerequisite then crashes out. If I manually install Windows Installer 3.1 then install our product it works.

[MichaelU]

Is your installer set to install Windows Installer 3.1 (check your release settings)? The MSI/.NET checkbox only changes the order of when the prerequisites and the setup's MSI and .NET support are run; it doesn't add the latter.

[cwhitehe]

Is your installer set to install Windows Installer 3.1 (check your release settings)? The MSI/.NET checkbox only changes the order of when the prerequisites and the setup's MSI and .NET support are run; it doesn't add the latter.

Yes, it is set to "Version 3.1 (requires Windows 2000 SP3 or greater)"

When I run my setup it immediately says it wants to install my prerequisite. This fails and when the setup program continues only then does it install Windows Installer 3.1. So if I subsequently run my setup a second time it works because it is now present.

[cwhitehe]

I've also got another project that requires Windows Installer 2.0.

So I ticked "Version 2.0 (under NT4, requires Service Pack 6)" when I build my project.

When I run my install on Windows 95 it fails, again because it does not seem to try and install the Windows Installer Engine before my prerequisite.

Is there any work around to this?

[MichaelU]

We've looked into this a bit more and found a logic error introduced in 11.5 due to code I added for the new ClickOnce projects, and are tracking this under IOC-000044079. I don't want to guarantee it yet, I expect we will hotfix this soon.

In the meantime, if you can edit your setup.ini file, you should be able to workaround this by adding the following line to the [Startup] section:
"ClickOncePackage= " (no quotes, but include the trailing space)

Thanks for calling our attention to this!

[cwhitehe]

Thanks for the update. I tried adding your suggestion to the Setup.ini, but this did not make any difference. I added to the ini file like this...

...
[Startup]
CmdLine=
SuppressWrongOS=Y
ScriptDriven=0
ScriptVer=1.0.0.1
DotNetOptionalInstallIfSilent=N
OnUpgrade=1
RequireExactLangMatch=0404,0804
Product=Test Application
PackageName=Test Application.msi
EnableLangDlg=N
LogResults=N
DoMaintenance=N
ProductCode={C04DB8CA-A98C-4520-AFF4-070A0ED2FEB3}
ProductVersion=2.24.0000
SuppressReboot=Y
PackageCode={43553EEE-D169-467A-B54A-E97340A36E20}
ClickOncePackage=

[MsiVersion]
3.1.4000.2435=SupportOSMsi30
... etc


I added a space after the ClickOncePackage, but it does not work.

[MichaelU]

:( That's what I get for going off the code alone; I haven't had time to test my proposed workaround. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure there is an easy workaround. We'll just have to get a hotfix out asap.

Another option, if you're so inclined: it shouldn't be too hard to make prerequisites to install MSI and/or .NET and include and order those, instead of using our release wizard options.

[cwhitehe]

Ok thanks. I will try you suggestion

[pctaylor]

I hope this is fixed ASAP. Being able to install Windows installer as a prereq is a rather important feature, how did that not get picked up in testing of 11.5???

[MichaelU]

I don't have a date on it, but we are hotfixing this, and "soon" should apply. I think it's waiting or about to be waiting on testing, in order to avoid worse breakage while fixing this. Thanks for your patience.

[cwhitehe]

In InstallShield, on the Start Page there is a link to Known Issues for InstallShield 11.5. Clicking on it opens a web link.

Should issues like this not be added to this list so that other users are aware of these issues?

[Ryan A]

Yes, that list of known issues seems a little short.. Not to mention, everytime I have a bug submitted through eService they give me a number, for instance:

IOC-000042627
1-1ANIT5
IOC-000042621
1-3BTJ4

And they say I can track these problems by this number in the knowledge base and/or release notes, but I've never been able to find reference to any of these bugs anywhere..

[Stefan Krueger]

I've just posted this, and a few more, at
http://www.installsite.org/pages/en/bugs_isw115.htm

[cwhitehe]

Thanks for the Stefan.

I don't want to go too far off topic from my original post, but here goes... I recently e-mailed InstallShield with the following list on the 6th December, but I have received no response. Here is a list of other possible bugs i've found, which need to be confirmed...

1) In the Dialog Editor you can create an "internal dialog" using the wizard. This creates a fairly blank dialog but includes a line at the bottom of the dialog separating the main section from the Back, Next and Cancel buttons. This line is not editable. However, the line starts too far over to the left of the dialog, leaving a large gap between the InstallShield label and the line itself. I’ve figured out how to amend this in the Direct Editor, but this is presumably a bug?

2) In the Features section of the system you can move features up and down and right clicking and selecting Move Up or Move Down. This appears to work, but when I save my project and re-open it, they are not ordered. This makes if difficult to see if my features are all correct as they are not in the nice tidy order I want them in.

3) I’ve upgraded a setup project from InstallShield Developer to InstallShield 11.5. In the patch design view, when I select the relevant patch the options that normally appear to the right are not shown. This includes the options whether you can click “Build Patch” and specify which Install Engines you wish to include etc. Patches created in original 11.5 projects are fine, so I think this must be an upgrade of the old project issue. Also, new patches in the upgraded project work fine, it just when I select a patch that was created prior to installing InstallShield 11.5. Note: InstallShield Developer is no longer installed, I recently formatted my machine as started from scratch with InstallShield 11.5, so it can't be a co-exist problem.

[MichaelU]

The full hotfix is taking longer than I hoped; resource crunches and all. Since it's a trivial code change, I've gotten permission to post the version of setupPreReq.exe that fixes the MSI/.NET installation part of the problem. If all goes well this is the same version that will go out as part of a hotfix within a couple weeks. But beware that it has not yet completed the QA process, so you will want to test it extra yourself before you distribute a product using it.

Extract the contents of this zip and place it in your [INSTALLDIR]redist\Language Independent\i386 folder (save a backup of the previous setupPreReq.exe in case anything goes wrong). Then after a rebuild of your project, prerequisites which require MSI or .NET should succeed at installing it.

[jkdarkfire]

Hello,

I too am having this problem. I downloaded your patch and compared versions to the version that I have installed (I have hotfix 1 installed) and the version is exactly the same. I am still having this problem. What next?

-jkdarkfire

[cwhitehe]

I personally have not had chance to test the fix myself yet. However, InstallShield did an automatic update itself the other day. On the list was this bug, so I guess this hotfix had it into a proper update as well. Should this not be enough to fix the issue? Unless the bug is not completely fixed yet. I will test our install after the new year.

[jkdarkfire]

Yeah, it looks like the hotfix has this fix in it. As mentioned in my previous post the version of setupPreReq.exe is exactly the same as the one provided in this thread so it's got to be the same component. It does not appear that this issue is fixed by the patch.

Unfortunately, I'm on a fairly tight deadline to get our products installer completed and I don't think a fix is coming in the near future so I need to come up with another way to install Windows Installer 3.1 before my .NET 2.0 prerequisite. Does anyone know a registry key which can be used or a file which can be used to determine what version of Windows Installer is installed? I need to create a custom prerequisite for this. The only things I can find on Microsoft's site are programatic calls to determine this information.

Any information on this would be fantastic. Thanks in advance.

-jkdarkfire

[ron100]

The version of <system32>\msi.dll is the version of Windows Installer.

Ron

[MichaelU]

Oh awesome; I thought the hotfix was going to be even later. Anyway per all the documentation I'm seeing the prerequisite requiring MSI/.NET ordering should be fixed. Unfortunately since I wasn't directly involved with the fix, I don't have the full details.

JKDarkFire, are you seeing that the versions of Windows Installer and/or .NET included in your setup (see the release wizard) are not being installed before a prerequisite that is marked to require them (see the prerequisite editor)?

[cwhitehe]

I've just tested the update on the setup I was originally having problems with and it has solved the issue.

When it installs my prerequisite it first displays a "Configuring Windows Installer" message which takes about 30 seconds to complete and then automatically goes on to install my prerequisite and finally runs my main setup program.

I've compiled the setup using the Windows Installer 3.1 engine and have confirmed that the msi.dll has been updated (after a reboot).

I've not yet tested it with Windows Installer 2.0 (I have another setup program which requires 2.0 to be installed first). I will repost if this one causes any problems, but it looks as though the problem has been resolved for me.