MSI Installation Issues

Question

I've got an MSI based install that I've wrapped in an EXE file as per my installation packaging software (which is Wise Package Studio 7.0 SP2).

I've made many changes to the install, and every time I've tested them, they've worked just fine... up until now.

I changed some text on a dialog box for when the installation finishes and now it seems that no matter how/where I run the installation from, it won't take my "new" version. It continues to "think" it's already installed and even shows an older iteration of my dialog text at then end of the removal/repair/modify.

It's almost like it's cached that MSI/EXE somewhere and instead of running the one I've recompiled (and fixed the message/made changes) it continues to run the "old" one from somewhere.

Any idea what to check for/what could be going on here? Is there windows folder I need to go check? I'm on XP SP2.

Answer 1

Try running on a different machine, this will definitely rule out any local caching.

Check that the changes you have made are actually in the MSI. (use Orca to do this.)

Answer 2

Okay, so I tried this using an XP VM and taking a snapshot before installing. Looks like somehow the previous install was corrupt and was somehow caching itself on the original test computer I was working with.

By going to a clean and fresh PC, my changes were there and the script worked as expected. Now, I don't know what happened to cause the installation to cache like that somewhere on the PC, but at least I found a resolution.

I'll update this question with the location of the cached files if I can track them down...

Answer 3

To remove any cached Windows Installer information, you can use MSIZAP. My guess is that you haven't changed the package code so windows sees it as the same version of the installer (I'm not sure about WISE, but InstallShield is usually configured to automatically change the package code each time you rebuild.)

As far as the location of the cached files, this is configurable so have a hunt around in WISE and you should find it.