8 replies to this topic

[vvasilev]

Hi everyone,

the installation of the features (products) I have in InstallShield works great.
Nevertheless when I go to Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, click "Change", choose "Modify" and try to add/remove/update a feature,
all my selections and settings, which I chose during the installation, are gone! All the features in the Custom Setup dialog appear as unselected, also all path variables are empty. The Installer doesn't know where the source files are and what was (or wasn't) installed...
And of course I can't do anything and get only errors.

Did I miss something to set up or this is standard behaviour?
What can be done in this case?

I'm using InstallShield 2009 Pro

Thanks in advance,

Vasil

Edited by vvasilev, 25 June 2009 - 09:58.

[Stefan Krueger]

"Repair" shouldn't take you to the feature selection dialog. The "Modify" button should do this. Maybe when you customized your setup you broke something there?
A verbose log file might also give some clues.

[vvasilev]

I meant "Modify", not "Repair", sorry! I'll correct the first post

[vvasilev]

What I was trying last to do is to write all the installation settings in the registry and then when the user chooses "Modify" to load them and start the modify process with these settings... but unfortunatelly that doesn't work too

I'm really out of ideas...

Here some screenshots from my installation:

1. When installing I chose all features but PDV Client and the subfeature AutoCAD2000


After the installation completed successfully, I go to Add/Remove Programs, choose Modify and it looks like this:


Any ideas?

[Stefan Krueger]

Maybe the RegisterProduct action doesn't work properly (or is missing?)
Did you generate a verbose log of the install? http://www.msifaq.com/a/1022.htm

[Glytzhkof]

Are you perhaps hacking about with the Preselected property? I have seen similar problems when I manually tweaked the Preselected property to make a major upgrade patch work. Do a verbose log and check what the value of Preselected is or wheter it is present at all.

Also worthwhile to check if there are any feature conditions (Condition table) that mess around with the Level value for each feature, or if there are custom actions messing around with the INSTALLLEVEL property.

Finally check whether the feature is set to favour local install or run from source.

[vvasilev]

@Stefan Krueger
I just made a verbose log and it seems the RegisterProduct action returns the value 1. That means it works properly, doesn't it? Below a short snippet of the log.

@Glytzhkof
The Preselected property is present and has the value 1.

The INSTALLLEVEL value is what I'm changing from the standard 100 to 125, if the user selects Custom Installation on the Setup Type dialog. Then in the InstallScript function I check this value and if it's 100, I'm executing certain function.
Can that be the catch?!

All my features are set to favour local


Thanks for your help!

Vasil

[Glytzhkof]

Hi, it sounds a bit strange what you are doing there. To be honest I am not quite following what's happening.

Maybe check the SDK one more time: http://msdn.microsof...536(VS.85).aspx

It's pretty likely that something is going haywire for non-fresh installs with regards to your custom actions and the INSTALLLEVEL.

The Preselected property is set to 1 whenever a "conscious feature selection" has been made - for example from the command line.

[vvasilev]

It's pretty simple what I'm doing. Other question is if it's efficient

I was changing the install level value from the default 100 to 125, if the user selects Typical Installation on the Setup Type dialog. I changed that yesterday - now I'm using the property _IsSetupTypeMin and don't change the INSTALLLEVEL value

I found the problem - all my features (except one) don't have destination folder and don't do anything actually. I only use the features to ask the user to make his/her selection and then according to that selection (feature states) I execute some custom actions. The features had also no components.

I found out that, if there are no files, registry entries, shortcuts and so on, associated with the features, the Installer marks them as inactive during Modify/Repair, regardless of the selection during the installation.