Install maintenance & location of original files

[andrejzr]

Hi,

I have a problem with maintanance mode of the installation (change installed features), I have searched through the forum but did not find an answer.

The product's installation has several features, and during initial install I do not install all. If I run the installation again from original location, I can add a feature and installation will complete OK.

In case I run the installation from Control Panel's Add/Remove programs, or from the "Uninstall" shortcut, geenrated by the installer, after selecting a feature to be installed, I am promted with the Browse for folder dialog to point to the original location. I do this, but after pressing OK, the dialog wil show again. Just as if the original setup file would not be recognized.

I am not using any special add-ins, just the Call DLL Function. Do you have any hint, what might be wrong with my script?

At the same time, I have related questions. After installing the product (compressed install), in the folder Documents and settings\\All Users\\Application Data\\{GUID} there is a folder, which includes the install/uninstall program. It is not the original EXE, it looks like it is just a part of decompressed installation script. Questions:
1. Can the location of these files be changed? I would rather have this installed in my product installation folder (program files\\...)
2. Could this "uncompressed" files be exchanged with the original setup exe? this might prevent the above described problem, since all information would be present?



Thank you in advance and best regards

Andrej

[MichaelNesmith]

Please read the help topic "Patch Source Resolution" (found under the title "Patching" in the help index) - this issue is virtually identical and is well documented there.

As for 1&2, I'm afraid the answer is no.

If you use web builds (even just as one big "OFFLINE" block), this issue will go away.

[andrejzr]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for a quick answer. I would like to point out, that I am not using patch builds. I am using a compressed installation, and would just like to add/remove features at a later time.

Is this not possible? I do point the "Browse" dialog to the original EXE file, but it does not help. If I understand the help file correctly, when the browse dialog is opened, I should run the original EXE, check where the temp files are created, and point to that location.

Thanks
Andrej

[jimo]

You are correct, you should point to the extracted files.

The reason Michael pointed you to the "patch source resolution" help is if you create a web build the files are cached locally, thus eliminating the browse dialog completely.

In practice we use a web build but distribute on a cd, all the necessary source files get cached locally so a Maintenance run finds the locally cached files.

[andrejzr]

Thanks for the hint. I haven't tried to build the setups using WEB build, because I did not have intention to use the WEB for deployment.

Now I checked how it works, and it seems that if I define one OFFLINE Web Media block for the whole setup, I get exactly the same result as if I would create a single compressed build. At first sight that is. Am I understanding this correctly, or there are other issues I should be aware of?

Hmm, maybe I am misusing the great functionality of the WEB Media Block deployment , but at this time we distribute the SW on CDs and we intend to keep it that way for now.

[MichaelNesmith]

No, this is perfectly legitimate use! And it will work just fine as you probably noticed.