1 reply to this topic

[Jim Bassett]

We have several msi installations using DevStudio and one of them, the FrameWork, installs various dlls, help files, etc. The other msi installations install files associated with a specific product and these files need the framework installed as well. We only desire to install the framework one time. We are chaining the msi together via the command line using DemoShield 6.0 so they are installed as seperate installations.

For our customers we wanted to install the framework msi silently but then the issue came up that we need to detect the following and inform the user:

1) The framework is already installed or needs to be updated
2) Specific applications are running so message the user and stop the framework install.

It is our understanding that while in silent mode we cannot display dialogs or other message UI to the user about these conditions, even if we create them from Custom Actions. Is this correct?

So it was suggested that the framework gets installed in non silent mode each time one of the other MSI is installed but then this would cause the user to see the mainatance mode of MSI appear( repair, remove, etc.). So another question is is there a way to catch an event that maintance mode is detected and suppress that UI? We do not wish to use the non mainatance mode switch in case the user desires to repair their installation of the framework at some later date.

[Stefan Krueger]

You could display a dialog in a custom action, but that's not good.
Instead of silent you may want to use reduced or basic UI instead of silent.
However the best solution would be not to launch the framework install if it's already there.