7 replies to this topic

[fuerstma]

Greetings and many thanks in advance for any help you can lend me.

I have inherited my companies existing Install Set from "the previous guy" due to cutbacks in all their glory. I am not too familar with InstallShields but was compotent enough to add new products to the Install Set and update files for the existing products. I have the "My Installations" directory shared out so I can test install the Install Set on a test machine across the network. Often when I left the test machine connected to the InstallShield machine it would result in me not being able to rebuild the Install Set since the files were still in use. So to remedy this I would delete the directory "\My Installations\ProjectName\Media\Default\Disk 1" leaving "\My Installations\ProjectName\Media\Default" empty. I would Build the Install Set and it would create a new Disk 1 and all was right in the world.

Well this morning on a slip on my part, I deleted "\My Installations\ProjectName\Media\Default" leaving "\My Installations\ProjectName\Media\" empty. Initally I didn't think of this as a big deal. (I figured) all the contents of the Install were still in tact, so I built the Install set again and it succesfully created "\My Installations\ProjectName\Media\Default\Disk 1\". In Windows Explorer I went to the "Disk 1" directory and all was not well. Previously the contents of Disk 1 where the usual Setup.exe, a small data1.cab and data2.cab and 17 folders with applications in them for the installer to grab them from for the install. Now the "Disk 1" directory has the Setup.exe and a very large data2.cab and a small data1.cab file. If I attempt to run Setup.exe it pops up our logo correctly, then about 7 generic and empty Windows Message Boxes (which I OK through) then a install screen with "TITLE_MAIN" and "TITLE_CAPTION" on it and it unexpectedly quits.

Obviously my deleting the "Default" directory had some pretty seriously negative effect. I don't know what I did. It would seem like the project is all still in tact so it should just compile everything fine as previously but this is not the case. I looked in the setup.rul file and it is there and has our company name and whatnot in there, so I can't imagine why the "TITLE_MAIN" and all that stuff is blank. That isn't the biggest question though, the missing folders and the now hige data*.cab file is perplexing as opposed to just the vanilla folders that we had previously. Help?!?!?! What did I do?

Thanks again for any help you can provide.

Matt Fuerst - mfuerst@telecorpproducts.com

[fuerstma]

Don't you love it when people reply to themselves? Well I haven't gotten the issues totally resolved, but I have managed to solve the issue with the monster CAB file. Someone in the options was a button to leave folders as is, or something to that effect instead of packaging them into a a CAB, which I have checked off and now instead of the CAB file I have the same 17 folders that I had previously. Woo hoo! Minor victory #1.

My problem now is still the 5 or 7 titleless/informationless dialog boxes, then the empty install screen and crash. Ideas?

[Blake Miller Wonder]

I tkink you should run the Media Build Wizard again on your 'Defualt' media and answer all the questions and let it created a refreshed Default.Mda file.
The 'building' of your output is controlled by this file.

I am also suspecting that perhaps you are also not performing a full build, or you are making a 'local debug' build of your media, and that could be why you are seeing the various results on one machine or another.

[fuerstma]

Thank you so much for the reply, and doing the complete Media Wizard Rebuild did solve one of my problems. I now get the appropriate directory structure in my install set, so that gave me the happy face.

However, I can now not run the Setup program succesfully. I get a series of empty dialog box/warning boxes, then the following occurs:

http://browserbased....stallshield.jpg

Where is information such as TITLE_MAIN and TITLE_CAPTIONBAR stored? It would seem like those values (somehow reset to the default now?) would be stored in setup.rul or the like, and those values are all still there appropriately. Advice? Thanks so so much. I couldn't sleep last night.

[Taco Bell]

TITLE_MAIN and TITLE_CAPTIONBAR are available in the String Table of the Resources tab.

These values are then saved in a file other than setup.rul under a subdirectory of String Tables based on the specified language settings (i.e. 0009-English\value.shl).

[fuerstma]

Just to share, I got ahold of the employee previously in charge of the Install Set. He mentioned that he hid a several-year-old backup of the Install Set away on our network. I dug it out and through trial and error I replaced the default.mda file in the "Default" directory with the previous Install Set, recompiled the set and the Setup.exe worked fine. Totally bizzare (since I am not 100% sure on what I'm doing).

Thanks so much for all your help, all appears working.

[Taco Bell]

Ah, the joy of inheritance.  Good luck!

Well that's good your predecessor had that backup because you messed things up pretty good.  Let that be a lesson to you to keep backups of your own work now just in case!

[Dean Thackery]

Just As an FYI, you don't need to delete the folder structure to rebuild.  On your test machine, just make sure you close the "Media" folder prior to rebuilding.  I believe InstallShield makes a temporary backup of the folder you're rebuilding.

I also normally copy the Disk1 folder out to a working directory for use by other machines to make sure I don't have someone remotely connected to my development area directly.  This has saved me a lot of headaches, once I started doing that.

HTH
Dean