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Any way to get merge modules NOT to uninstall?


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adunderwood

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Posted 22 February 2002 - 17:10

I'm using InstallShield Express 3.5 and fairly new to the wonders of DLL #### and Windows Installer, so it's possible that I'm overlooking something obvious.  

The Problem: My application required DAO 3.5 as a dependency and I am installing this with the DAO 3.5 merge module.  This works.  This works fine.  Both executables in the application can talk to it, everything is dandy....

but

When I uninstall the application, the uninstaller completely removes the DAO 3.5 components/dlls.  This kills functionality for alot of other, unrelated applications and causes general turmoil in the system.

The Solution as I understand it:  I need to install DAO 3.5 on the user's machine but NOT uninstall it.

Anybody have any ideas on how to do this?  


adunderwood

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Posted 26 February 2002 - 18:07

Okay.  I've done research on what I'm *actually* trying to do-- which is install the DAO components for MS Windows.  I have a way to do this manually, which I am trying to avoid but will use as necessary.

Apparantly, any installation of DAO is supposed increment a registry key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs\ > C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DAO\DAO350.DLL) each time that DAO is installed.  

This way, when multiple installations of DAO occur, only the last application that needs it, removes it.  All other applications (key > 0) simply decrement the registry key and move on.

Does anyone know if the DAO350 merge modules as written by Heath Stewart behaves this way?  I am getting reports from my testers that it is removing these files even though they are in use.  

I hope this has made the problem clearer.  Any ideas?

Thanks,

Alan Underwood


aglenwright

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Posted 28 February 2002 - 23:44

Is it your own merge module?  I am not familliar with IS Express, but in the other versions, you can mark components as "Permanent".

adunderwood

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Posted 01 March 2002 - 01:02

Thanks for the reply.  I've gotten around this problem.  The biggest problem, actually, has been InstallShield Express.  It's a solid product but I just need more power from my Installer than it can provide and due to budget constraints, I can't upgrade to Professional or Developer.

What I finally deduced as the problem, and this is solely from observation is this:

When one installs MS DAO, there is a registry key that holds a count of the number of times that DAO has been installed and, by inference, how many applications are using it that must be incremented when DAO is installed and decremented when it is uninstalled.  From my observation, the DAO 3.5 merge module that I have does not do this (it was written by Heath Stewart and I downloaded it from InstallShield's website).

The solution as I have found it:  MS Visual Studio includes a redistributable DAO setup.  I wrote a small app in VB that checks the key for existance and if it's 0, it shells to the MS DAO installer.  If it's not, it does not.  It's perhaps not the most elegant solution but it's stable and easy to do.  I am hoping that most of my userbase already has DAO installed-- and this is highly likely.

If you or anyone else out there has a better idea or knows of a different DAO 3.5 merge module, I'd be very interested in that it would be a much more attractive solution, but I do not think that the problem lies so much in the module but in the platform.  I *do* know that I will never ever undertake an installer project as complicated as the one I am working with without a more powerful version of InstallShield.  Ah, lessons learned.  

I hope these posts help other developers out there.  The project has not been released (though it's imminent) so any responses are still pertinent and desired.

Thanks again,

Alan Underwood
Koroberi New World Marketing