Cancel button and MessageBox not working

[borghesi]

Good evening,

I'm using InstallAware 18 to create some installer for our products but I've noticed a strange problem.
On some systems (expecially on Windows 7 Embedded editions) the cancel button in the UI is not working and every attempt to clic on it is like not clicking at all.
I've experienced something similar when using the MessageBox inside the script: the box is not displayed and the script's flow continues as if no MessageBox was used...

This behaviour depends on the system and not on the project (this happens also with sample projects made with Installaware wizard).
On the machine with Installaware installed, everything works as expected...

Is there any prerequisite to have MessageBox working?
Is this a known bug or am I doing something wrong?

Thank you

Edoardo

[FrancescoT]

Dear Edoardo,

in all honesty what you are reporting sounds very strange.

For what concerns the Message-Boxes, it's not required any particular prerequisite because Message-Boxes are handled by the system directly (User32.dll). By the way, you may try to check if a message-box gets displayed by other application. For example you may try with running a simple app as notepad and with trying to open an unsupported file format.

Regarding the cancel button, even in this case it's not necessary any additional prerequisite and in addition, all the dialogs resources are embedded with the setup itself. A question, when did you try at setup runtime to click the CANCEL button? During setup interview or during the effective install process?

Regards

[borghesi]

Thank you very much!

By providing me the information about the Windows API used to create a message box (USER32.DLL MessageBoxEx()) you helped me finding the cause of my problem.

I discovered a strange feature of Windows Embedded systems which defaults all message boxes (yes, it's true!!) to avoid that popups could occur!
Here it is the MSDN page that explains the feature "Message Box Default Reply" and how to disable it: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa940743(v=winembedded.5).aspx

Now our installers are finally working as expected!

Thank you

Edoardo

[FrancescoT]