Weird MSI problems caused by InstallShield bug

Recently, I've seen posts about some problems that really sounded weird to me. From the forum posts I was unable to tell what the setup authors might have done wrong. Here are some of the symptoms that have been reported in setup communities:

After a Major Upgrade, you have two entries in Add/Remove Programs control panel.
Error message "1: ALLUSERS property is not 1 - this MSM cannot be used for a per-user or fallback-to-per-user install" during installation, although ALLUERS had been set to 1.

When attempting to uninstall the application you may also see the following error messages:

"Another version of this product is already installed. Installation of this version cannot continue. To configure or remove the existing version of this product, use Add/Remove Programs on the Control Panel."
"This action is only valid for products that are installed".

As it turns out, this can be caused by a problem in InstallShield 2008. If a Basic MSI setup includes a custom action written in InstallScript, the script engine changes the value of the ALLUSERS property.

Macrovision has released a hotfix to address this problem, and also documented some workarounds:

HOTFIX: InstallScript Initialization Code Modifying ALLUSERS Property

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Stefan Krueger