InstallAware

InstallShield uses the Upgrade Code in the same way that InstallAware uses the Product Code.
When installing a new InstallAware based version of our product, we have to search for our old InstallShield installs using an Upgrade Code = to what is now our Product Code. The Upgrade Code plug-in (http://www.axonet.de/eng/Axo/plugins_fo ... laware.htm) works great for that.

The problem I'm having is that our customers sometimes need to downgrade to the old InstallShield version. This means I need our old InstallShield installs to recognize that a new version of the product installed by InstallAware is present and uninstall it. The only way I can think to do this is to set the Upgrade code in our new packages to the same GUID as the Product code.

Is it possible to set the Upgrade code? How?
Is there a better way to do this?

Hmmm. I cant think of anything that is directly compatible, however, you could query the registry to identify what is installed and alter your execution as appropriate.

Unfortunately, the FDA requires that we maintain old versions of our software exactly as published (we're in the health care industry). This prevents us from modifying our old InstallShield installers. Even if we could, there are still those versions that have already been distributed.

I imagine I'm not the only one dealing with compatability issues with other installers. Could I request that the ability to access/edit the Upgrade Code directly be added? I currently can't use your tool seemlessly in our installer environment without it or a viable workaround.

Why not just read the ARP entry for your setup and execute it?

I'm not sure what an ARP entry is but the old InstallShield based installer will be what's running during a downgrade and I can't modify it. All i can think to do is make sure that the UpgradeCode in the InstallAware package matches what the InstallShield installer uses so that it recognizes it as the same product.