InstallAware

After I upgraded to R2 SP3 I started getting failed installtions and after running a logged install, it was failing when registering some MS Common Controls being installed from Merge Modules. UNKNOWN is being Prepended to the path of the component being registered.

Moving them to IA they worked fine, but I have several of them so I'm moving back to SP2 to verify whether or not it is truly a problem with SP3. The same installs worked fine building from SP2.

...a possible small (maybe bug) in SP2, forgot to check it in SP3, but if I add the Windows Glass Control to a dialog and then delete it, save the changes, when I reopen the dialog again the control is still there.

...a little trick I ran across is using the Windows Vista Black Theme (was a separate download), that adding an alpha value between 245 and 250 you get a semi-transparent look of the two top irregular shaped lighter shades while the rest of the dialog appears opaque. Playing with the alpha setting a bit further and having a bit of Flash know how you can get a simulated Vista Glass look even on XP. Yet another trick that can be done in Flash and more than one Flash Control in a dialog is getting different animations in the same dialog with one movie.swf file by playing a separate Frame animation based on the size of the control. The flexibilty of IA and a bit of imagination never ceases to amaze me and some of this stuff is just not possible at all in the other installers I have tried.

No, I don't work for these guys, just used the Studio Admin version of IA since v5 after moving from those other guys and IA is one of the better investments I have made.

I've verified in SP3 that if you add a Vista Glass control, save the dialog, reopen it, delete the control, then click save, it will re-appear as soon as the save button is clicked!

Could you provide a little more info on the common control issue? Steps to reproduce would be helpful, as well as controls tested (and where to get them).

Looks like it was one of two things on the common controls, SP2 or most likely a corrupted installation of R2 SP2. I couldn't install SP3 without an out of sync MSI error (Sorry don't have the exact verbiage). SP2 would not uninstall or repair, so I used Add/Remove features and removed the commandline build. That repaired the installation so I was able to uninstall it and install SP3. My thoughts are a null path value was being passed to the msm.

The Merge Modules are working fine now. They were MS's VB6 Common Control set that I got straight from MSDN. Was weird on how the others worked, but not MS's...but we are working with Windows .

...The Vista Glass thing is the only true IA bug I personally ever found. All others have been something on my end and the Vista Glass issue is not a ship stopper, because the dialogs work fine turning all of the controls settings off.

Thanks,

SteveDude