Install Files is not checking the file version

[Chris Miller]

I have an installer written in IA 7.5 and one of the files that gets installed is a Microsoft DLL, msvcr71.dll. It is used by another file that gets installed (a self-registering DLL). In order for the other DLL to register, msvcr71.dll needs to be on the path. This appears to be a common practice with other installers and I'm putting it in $WINSYSDIR$.

The problem is that I'm testing my installer under VMWare and some of the VMWare processes also use msvcr71.dll. Every time I run my installer, Windows Installer logs an INFO 1603 message about the file being in use. This forces a reboot. I was able to work around this by setting the "Never Overwrite" checkbox on the "Install Files" dialog box. The only other checkbox that I had set was the "Permanent File" checkbox.

This doesn't feel right. Shouldn't the installer be able to check the version number of the dll and skip that step when it identifies an existing copy of msvcr71.dll with the same version number?