In "POSIX" style locale support on Windows? , Michael Kaplan, the Technical Lead for Windows Globalization, describes the existing locale-dependent functions in the C Runtime (CRT) as "unwieldy". To compare strings, for example, using a different locale...

The setup.exe bootstrap example in the Windows Installer SDK won't run on versions of Windows below the minimum subsystem version set in the PE header....

Last Monday we shipped Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 to MSDN customers, and made them publicly available Wednesday. More information about Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 are available on MSDN , and Aaron Stebner has...

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, and Team Foundation Server 2008 Service Pack 1 have been released . This is a big release on the heals of SQL Server 2008 which has a dependency on .and includes NET Framework...

An explanation of why dialogs are blank for .NET Framework 2.0 patches and what ISVs redistributing the Framework can do about it....

How to work around the issues with ARP when defining ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT=1....

I have released Windows Installer PowerShell Extensions 1.0 beta , complete with an installer package. I have also added a couple of cmdlets, and format and type configurations for a good out-of-the-box experience when using the cmdlets Get-MSIProductInfo...

In many languages, some variables can take a value of different types but with the same meaning. Variants in script, for example, can take 0 or false; or they can take any non-zero value and true. The following JScript example prints "Same". if (0 ==...

Updated guidelines for COM interoperability with .NET with new types available with .NET 2.0....

By installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta now (or tomorrow for general availability ), you have a great opportunity to provide early feedback before we ship VS2010 SP1 RTM. Not only do we welcome feedback on the updates to the product such as the new...

When installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 , users may see an error that reads, Error 1718.File D:\WINDOWS\Installer\50baad.msp was rejected by digital signature policy. While the filename will be different, the result is that the patch will...

Transforms can change just about anything in an installation package - even the code page. Transforms can also add and drop both tables and columns but they cannot, however, change the column type. This is true for patches as well, since a patch package...

Administrators and developers who need to detect if Visual Studio 2012 is installed on a machine can use similar keys as those used for past releases like Visual Studio 2010 . In general, these detection keys are always found in the 32-bit registry hive...

While attempting to install Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 , you may get a prompt for source that looks like the following screenshot. This problem commonly occurs if you have not installed one or more of the features Visual...

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 is a big release with many fixes and lots of new features. But with several known issues related to its size, SP1 is a hot issue - maybe a little too hot. A couple of customers were encountering a problem while when...

Yesterday was a truly remarkable day. Not since Windows NT 3.1 released in 1993 have we seen such a shift in computing on Windows to another architecture. Windows Server 2003 SP1 for x64 and Windows XP Professional for x64 were released to manufacturing...

How to author MSI packages for in-place updates of managed assemblies in the global assembly cache....

Requiring source packages during installation , repairs , and even uninstall are common occurrences for some customers. The core issue is that Windows Installer needs the source location of the package and its files to install - and can't find them automatically...

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) team has released version 3.6 which, most notably, released a powerful and customizable chainer named Burn . The Visual Studio 2012 setup applications were built on Burn using features such as package caching , reference...

Customers have commented that whenever they try to install other products or patches they continually see the following message, Another installation is in progress. You must complete that installation before continuing this one. Customers may...

Version 1.4.1993 of the Shell Extensions for .NET Assemblies has been released....

Enable BITS logging for diagnostic information about download failures using BITS....

Solutions to setup build failures or Crystal Reports load failures....

For almost as many years as I can remember, I've spent my days on the outside looking in. But now I'm here at Microsoft and with my very own blog associated with my most favorite site on the 'net: the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) . Before coming...

How to avoid overwriting files during administrative installations....