4 replies to this topic

[rene_mt]

Hello there!

I've got a strange problem with my installation on Windows 2000 machines:

If you copy the installation image on an external hard disk (in this case an TrekStor USB 2.0 HD) and start the installation from there everything seems to proceed without any problems. After this the external hard disk is removed.

But: If you now try to launch the installed application using the created shortcuts on desktop or in the start menu, the installer wants to install something again and therefore asks for a valid source MSI. But this behaviour is not intended!

When I took a look at the created shortcuts I recognized that there is not the target path to the binary entered but only the applications name - and this is read-only in the edit field and so can not be changed. If I manually create a shortcut to the installed binary everything works fine.

This behaviour is only reproduceable with an external hard disk. With USB memory sticks, CD-ROMs, locally copied images, or network shares everything works correctly, even if the images are removed after installation.

The application is installed for all users of the target machine (ALLUSERS=1), the installing user has administrator rights. The installation image has been created using ISWI 1.52 (don't laugh :-) ) but I hope this has no effect on the described behaviour.

So does anybody have some helpfull hints? I've got no idea about this...

Regards,

ReneMT

[Stefan Krueger]

[rene_mt]

Thanx so far, the article seems to be quite helpful. I will keep on inspecting this problem and post again when I need further help.

ReneMT

[rene_mt]

Well, according to the FAQ article posted by you (http://www.msifaq.com/a/1037.htm) I could break down the problem:

I seems to be caused by the MDAC 2.5 SP3 merge module provided by Microsoft which I am using in my setup project.
The entry in the windows event log says the failing component is missing at location "E:\" - which is the root directory of the external HD.

Because this seems to be a bug in the authoring of the merge module I will not be able to correct this.

However: The fact which I am also heavily interested in is why the installer creates an advertised shortcut when installing from the external HD (and only when installing from there)... I disallowed advertising for all features in general.

So why does this happen at all?

Greets,
Rene-Martin Tudyka

[Stefan Krueger]

Whether a shortcut is advertised or not is determined by the way to build the setup. As far as I know it doesn't depend on where the instalaltion source is located at install time. It does however depend on OS (and potentially IE) version of the target machine. Maybe there is a difference?