What are the VS SDK 1.1 MSI Installer Properties?

Question

My problem is this: I am getting a TFS build failure that I have tracked back to what appears to be a missing Registry key under SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0Exp.

This machine had the VS SDK 1.1 installed via a command line: msiexec vsski.msi

So, I am guessing that I need to pass some properties to the msiexec to tell it that it should install some component which isn’t getting installed by default – is this correct? If so, can anyone point me to the correct property?

msiexec vssdk.msi WHATPROPERTY=”I want to control the which components are installed”

Or am I off track here?

Answer 1

Okay, I found the answer and I was a little off track.

More background: The error occurred in the VsTemplatePathsTarget of the Microsoft.VsSDK.targets file while calling the custom task VsTemplatePaths. A little reflector (great tool!) told me that it is trying to find the registry key above.

When I tracked it more closely I discovered that the key was not present under HKLM, but was under HKCU, but reflector and some trace messages said it was using HKCU. More precisely, the key in question is present under my account in HKEY_USERs, but not the account the TFS build runs under.

It turns out, my automated install sequence was such that the build account was created after the VS SDK was installed, thus when it configured the registry settings it only did so for existing users and not the default user.