3 replies to this topic

[hrms]

I need to preserve manually created config subfolders and files in my installation (major upgrade scenario). For this I would like to invoke a InstallScript CA before RemoveExistingProducts. But because this is before InstallInitialize this is not possible. How can I copy a subfolder of my installation or rename a subfolder before it is uninstalled by the major upgrade? Or is there a better approach than to try to save existing config files by some InstallScript copy/move/renaming action?

[Zweitze]

In the default behaviour, uninstall and major upgrade only remove the file that were created during the install. Any file or folder created later will not be removed. In other words: uninstall only removes known files, it will not remove random files from -say- your system32 folder.
Any folder created by the install will only be removed when it is empty during uninstall.

So, you shouldn't have to worry about Windows Installer removing your fies - unless you wrote a CA to do exactly so.

[hrms]

This sounds good and how it should in my oppinion, but in my tests the behaviour is unfortunately not like that. My manually created subfolders and files in my installation are all removed during a major upgrade.

[Eugene82]

it depends on how was realized uninstallation process. may be old product has custom action for hardly remove some folders.
why do you need exactly Inscript custom action?