InstallAware

Sometimes the registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Internet Settings\\ReceiveTimeout
is being set to 10000 in my registry.
Could IA 9 Studio during some kind of periodic internet check for updates or licensing and automatically creating this registry setting. It seems to "appear" in my registry sometimes after launching IA Studio (it is hard to catch this, because it seems to happen every week or so).

If it is IA setting this (as I said, it "seems" to be set after I run IA sometimes, but I do not know for sure) .... it really SHOULD NOT do this!! This registry setting screws up people doing web development (among other things). It adds a receive timeout that causes browser page timeouts while doing web development (page loads sometimes take longer than 10 seconds doing a re-build). There is absolutely no reason any application should be changing this value ... EVER.

If this is being done by IA, is there a way to disable it in the current release? If it is not being set by IA, then ignore my post

Good sleuthing - this is being set by InstallAware. And there's a good reason for it. As a workaround, just add a Delete Registry call to your setup, so it won't do this for you. Any time a Web Media Block command executes in a web build, or a Download File command is called, this key will be set.

As for the reason, InstallAware uses Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine, as long as at least Internet Exporer 3 is installed on the target system (if not, InstallAware falls back to its own download engine). Now, this engine times out in EXACTLY one hour. This means when you are working with your setups, they could appear to FREEZE for one hour when a web connection stalls. There is NO programmatic way to prevent this FREEZE - we have looked long and hard. The only workaround is this timeout key.

If you're wondering why we use Microsoft's engine, it is to ensure maximum and seamless compatibility with corporate networks that make use of proxies. In our research, no custom download technology never approaches the accuracy levels of proxy detection for web downloads that the Microsoft engine does.

So there really are well-thought engineering decisions behind the ways things are done - the ultimate goal being providing the highest success rates with your installs.

Changing this value really can have very bad effects on computers. I thought that this value was only being set on the machine creating the install program ... but I believe you are saying that any machine that runs the generated setup program may have this registry setting changed? Ouch ... that would be worse than I thought.

I understand the value of using the IE engine for http communications...

Could you save the current registry setting, then set it to the 10 second value, do your web stuff, then restore it to the original? Or perhaps kick off the http requests in a different thread, and cancel the thread after a timeout. Or use the asyncronous http commands of the IE engine.

Currently, does the Web Media Block have to execute to set this value? Are there any other times (other than Download File) that this is set? I just ran the setup program on the build machine, and it doid not set this key. Could there be other times ... does the IA Studio initiate web requests (upgrade check, license check, etc) that could also set this key?

Thanks

Is there a list of the global systems that can be modified by an InstallAware setup? I understand the reasons for why you set that key, but it would be good to have a list to be able to reset those values if something goes wrong.

[email protected] wrote:Currently, does the Web Media Block have to execute to set this value? Are there any other times (other than Download File) that this is set? I just ran the setup program on the build machine, and it doid not set this key. Could there be other times ... does the IA Studio initiate web requests (upgrade check, license check, etc) that could also set this key?

I would also recomend publishing all system registry settings that could modified by the installer, and in what conditions. These changes to the registry can have devistating consequences (we were minutes away from a complete system install because of the ReceiveTimeout change), and users need to be aware of this.

Regards

There aren't any other settings I'm aware of, you can always build a trivial InstallAware setup and run a setup capture on it with PackageAware to verify.

MichaelNesmith wrote:As a workaround, just add a Delete Registry call to your setup, so it won't do this for you. Any time a Web Media Block command executes in a web build, or a Download File command is called, this key will be set.

We would need to restore the registry setting to what is was prior to the install rather than just deleting it (the customer may have already set it to a particular value prior to the install). Is there a way to do that?

Thanks

But of course, Read Registry and Write Registry

Great! The Write registry is part of the windows installer (rather than direct execute). Would just setting the "Permanent - do not remove if written" checkbox make it so that it would not "undo" the change after an uninstal?

Thanks!

Yes, it certainly would!

This behavior has been updated in InstallAware 9 R2 as follows: the previous time-out value is automatically restored upon completion or cancellation of a download.

Please help yourself to a release candidate of InstallAware 9 R2 to ensure it works to your satisfaction:
http://www.installaware.com/forum/viewt ... 3&start=30

I am having this same problem, I have just upgraded to IA 9 R2 and I am still experiencing this issue.

If the registry key is set to 30 seconds, it will be reset to 10 seconds and stays that way

If the registry key does not exist, it is set to 10 seconds and stays that way.

Is there anything I should be doing to switch on this functionality in installaware 9 R2?

Steve

Make sure that both your license and product trial files are the 9 R2 version.

I just did a clean install of R2 SP3 with a newly generated license file. ReceiveTimeout is still being set to 10000 on my development box. How can I keep the machine that I author the installer projects from being changed?