I stuck comctl32.msm in an installer (comctl32.ocx merge module). On XP, comctl32.ocx appears in system32 and everything is happy. On vista, it does not work. Any guesses what I am doing wrong? I also tried replacing the merge module with a <file> and a lot of registry changes, in a component, but the file didn't move and the registr...
I'm currently learning how to create msi installers using WiX and it seems I've hit a wall. All is well when I create an MSI containing everything needed for a single environment. I have features, and components, and can install my MSI. Now I'm at the stage where I want to convert this in a SQL Server-style installer, where you have m...
I wrote an install program with wix and it worked fine to install my program. Now I need to update it, so I bumped up the version number but when I go to install the new program over the old one it complains that an older version is already installed and tells me to uninstall it fisrt. How do I get it to update or automatically uninstall...
Following the advice of wcoenen, I've decided to try using registration-free COM. This works perfectly, excepting on pre-XP machines, of course. One idea which I thought would be kind of neat would be to add to some files, SelfRegCost='[var]'. It is quite likely that this is not The Right Thing™ but I still want to know how to do it, ...
I'm currently integrating my Wix projects in MSBuild. It is necessary for me to pass multiple values to the Wix project. One value will work (ProductVersion in the sample below). <Target Name="BuildWixSetups"> <MSBuild Condition="'%(WixSetups.Identity)'!=''" Projects="%(WixSetups.Identity)" Targets="Rebuild" Properties...
Background: I always try to ensure the following tenent in my projects: After a fresh checkout a developer should be able to do all project related tasks with solely the contents of the combined folders. Obviously, this isn't always possible (e.g. Visual Studio for Windows development). However, I really dislike having to install any ...
After a lot of trial and error (mostly due to lack of documentation and examples) I have managed to create MSI installers that install custom DLLs to WinSxS as side-by-side assembly. There is only one problem: Uninstalling leaves all files (DLLs, manifests and catalogs) in the WinSxS directory. How can or should I best clean that up? I k...
Is there any reason not to set up the install so that major upgrade is always done and productcode changed? I find that supporting different kinds of installs needs more code, and "repair" install seems to work easier with major upgrade. Also the application that needs to be installed is not very big, thus there is no need for "service ...
For example, I don't want to overwrite the config file and some other files,What should I do using WiX? ...
I have a client that is having problems with our the .msi installer for our application. Wix was used to create this installer. The application has installed just fine on dozens of other machines, but on his machine it displays the message: This installation package could not be opened. Contact the application vendor to verify ...
When Wix creates a shortcut with the same name as an existing shortcut, it overwrites the existing shortcut. Is there a way to detect the existing shortcut and ensure the new shortcut has a unique name? For example, if Wix installs shortcut "MyApp" on the desktop, but the user already has a shortcut named "MyApp" on their desktop, I'd l...
I have created a simple Wix 3 Merge Module in VS 2005 ( .wxs ) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"> <Module Id="TestMergeModule" Language="1033" Version="1.0.0.0"> <Package Id="ef2a568e-a8db-4213-a211-9261c26031aa" Manufacturer="Me" InstallerVersion="200" /> <Director...
Once upon a time, a young, naive engineer thought it would be a good idea to separate out some of the functionality for his app into a COM component, written in C#. Visual studio had all the tools to do that, right? .NET was practically made for this, right? HA! He said, this will be easy. I'll have decent separation of components, ...
I am using WIX at the moment, but keep on running into limitations (such as ability to expand properties as the value of another property). Also not sure if I ran into a bug with the FileSearch element, because it is not working as expected (does not find a file that is definitely there). I can go the route of using custom actions built ...
After asking about what Visual Studio does to register a COM Library, it became clear that VS did two things for COM registration: Registered the COM Library Creates and registers a Type Library Visual Studio seems to do this registration using regasm.exe. For the first part (the direct COM registration) using tallow or heat (WiX 2...
Quite simply, what's the difference between a WiX include (.wxi file) and a WiX fragment (.wxs file)? What are the use cases for each? Which "should" be used and why? ...
I am looking for a replacement for InstallShield. Unfortunately we only have 1 license for InstallShield and it was installed on a developer's machine. I'm considering switching over to WiX, but after reading the documentation there is a Product ID GUID, Upgrade Code GUID and a Package GUID. I also know GUID's were created by InstallShi...
I've tried <UIRef Id="WixUI_Minimal" /> but I get "Unresolved reference to symbol WixUI:WixUIMinimal". What am I doing wrong? ...
I want to select features based on certain properties' values. Similar to this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/246329/wix-how-to-select-features-from-command-line It seems that setting the ADDLOCAL property value is one way to do it, but is this the right way? Microsoft seems to warn against doing it in this article: htt...
I am developing installer for a Application Suite using WIX, and the structure is follows: Application Core |_ _ Flavor1 |_ _ Flavor2 |_ _ Flavor3 Application Core is a product like Visual Studio and, Flavors 1,2,3 are sub products under it. Here is my problem, - In Add remove programs should have 4 entries for Appl...