4 replies to this topic

[vishwa]

Hello All,
When my product is installed, I see that on reboot, the registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
is modified.

The data for value Desktop in this key was initially D:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop, and after the install and reboot, it was changed to D:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Desktop.

This was observed in Win2k machines. However, on WinXP, the value was changed to some directory in system32.

Is there any explanation to this behavior? It seems like InstallShield is touching these registry values. Does anyone know why?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Vishwa

[Stefan Krueger]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER is for the currently logged on user. So if the logged on user changes after the reboot this would be perfectly okay. Double check HKEY_USERS to see if the value really changed.

[vishwa]

Actually, I installed using the local administrator account, and after installation and reboot, I again logged in as the same local admin.
So, for the same user, the value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER is changed.
The value in HKEY_USERS is not changed.

One more thing that I noticed after reading your post is that the new value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER after the reboot is actually the value found in HKEY_USERS. So, either installshield, or windows is copying over the values from HKEY_USERS to HKEY_CURRENT_USER as soon as the reboot is done after installation.

Please throw some more light on what might be happening.

Thanks,
Vishwa

[Stefan Krueger]

I have no idea what's going on there, sorry.

[Glytzhkof]

The default user profile is the profile given to a fresh user created on the target system. As such changing it can ensure that certain data gets copied to new users profiles. It sounds like an update to the default user profile somehow has targeted the wrong registry hive. I would check any custom actions and all registry entries.