Setup Related Blogs

Happy New Year to all my readers!

I missed this news over the holidays, so here it is a bit late: On December 22nd, 2011 Caphyon Ltd. announced the release of Advanced Installer 8.8. The new version adds support for VMware ThinApp to the existing App-V support, so now you have more choice of supported application virtualization solutions. In addition there are improvements for digital signatures and prerequisites and many more.

For details please see the release notes.

With this release, the Advanced Installer team at Caphyon continues with their approximately monthly release cycle. Gladly that doesn't mean that you have an outdated version a few weeks after purchase, because Advanced Installer includes six months of maintenance by default (the Plus editions include 30 months of maintenance).

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Advanced Installer (full versions, upgrades and maintenance extensions) are available via the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

On November 29th, 2011 Caphyon Ltd.announced the release of Advanced Installer 8.7. New features in this version include:

• Software Identification in accordance with ISO/IEC 19770-2:2009
• App-V package dependencies
• Tab Host control in enhanced user interface
• Internet Explorer predefined searches
• "Log on as a service" policy support
• and many other enhancements and fixes

Release Notes

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Advanced Installer (full versions, upgrades and maintenance extensions) are available via the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

Microsoft has published a new tool to help end users fix setup related issues such as programs that can't be installed or uninstalled. It replaces the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility (MSICUU) which had been withdrawn in June 2010. Unlike MSICUU, the new tool actually tries to fix issues with the Windows Installer registry. If that doesn't help, the tool makes some efforts to remove the application, while MSICUU only deleted the entry from Windows Installer and left all the garbage behind.

In my test, the tool successfully deleted the installed file, but left behind the empty folder in the Program Files directory. It also failed to delete the registry entry my test setup had created and the start menu shortcut to the exe.

The new tool also takes precautions like creating a restore point before it starts its work, and making backup copies of the resources it deletes. It even creates an undo script.

You can find the tool at http://support.microsoft.com/mats/program_install_and_uninstall/. For more details about how the tool works, see Aaron Stebner's blog post. Here are some screenshots from the tool:

The tool has an option to automatically fix problems, but I used the second option.

It helps with installation problems as well as uninstall issues.

The "Not Listed" option opens a dialog where you can enter the ProductCode GUID of a package you want to uninstall. For testing purposes, I created a setup where uninstallation was intentionally broken (via a LaunchCondition of Not Installed).

The summary shows that it created backups of the deleted files and registry entries. However the latter only include Windows Installer's own entries like those under HKLM:\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\INSTALLER\... and HKLM:\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\UNINSTALL\... They entry under HKLM\Software\... which I specified in the Registry table of my msi was left behind.

This is how the backup folder structure looks like:

With InstallShield version 2010 Flexera Software introduced the requirement that activation of the software has to be repeated yearly. Typically this re-activation happens automatically without user interaction. However in some cases, the automatic re-activation fails and when trying to manually re-activate some users get an error message: "The license for this computer is in use on another computer. ... Error 20653 - The number of activations allowed for this account has been exceeded."

Flexera Software has documented a workaround for this problem in knowledge base article Q212463.

Flexera Software released Service Pack 1 for InstallShield 2012. Many of the fixes apply to the Suite Installation project type that was introduced in version 2012 and is only available in the Premier edition. But there are also fixes for the Professional and Express editions and for the Stand-Alone Build module.

• Release Notes for Premier and Professional
• Release Notes for Express
• Download instructions

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InstallShield can be purchased from the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/installshield.htm

Last week, Symantec officially announced the end of life of Wise Package Studio, confirming what was already discussed in October. It will be replaced by its former rival product, AdminStudio, from Flexera Software. Here's the official announcement:

http://www.symantec.com/business/theme.jsp?themeid=wise-package-studio-migration

For more details, see also my blog article of October 6.

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 AdminStudio can be purchased from the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/adminstudio.htm