3 replies to this topic

[mfindlay]

I am working on a program that reads all the msi files in the Windows\Installer directory and interprets their contents.

One confusing file (the msi for Microsoft Intellipoint 4.0) contains tons of column values such as ##NEW_STRING102## and ##IDS_INIFILE_1## etc.

There is an InstallShield table in the msi file with a 'tag' value of 'InstallShield for Windows installer, 2.3.94' so I assume this is the place to ask this question:

How can I resolve the values enclosed in the '##' programmatically? Is there an MSI api call or custom action I need to execute or is there a resource file I need to access etc?

Thanks for any help!

[Stefan Krueger]

In which table do you see these entries?
There should probably a correcsponding transform (.mst) that includes the localized strings.

[mfindlay]

Quote (Stefan Krueger @ Mar. 19 2002,21:52)

In which table do you see these entries? There should probably a correcsponding transform (.mst) that includes the localized strings.

The ##... strings are found in the following tables in the msi file. (Note that this is the msi file in the cached directory as a result of the install so would the mst files be found?)

IniFile table
LaunchCondition table
Property table
Shortcut table

Could it be this represents a bug in the Installshield iswi product? I went to their site and it appeared that iswi was an obsolete program? Just speculating.

[Ian Blake]

##xxx## strings are meant to be substituted from the InstallShield string table when the product is built.  This was the case in versions upto 2.03. I can not comment on the later versions.