Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Installation (RSS)

Topics about Windows Installer and other installer technolgies used and developed by Microsoft.
Thursday, July 24, 2008 11:20 PM

Why Windows Installer May Require so much Disk Space

Windows Installer is an engine for performing transactional installations. When installing a product for the fist time, most often few or no files to be installed are already present on the machine. But when upgrading or patching a product, most often
Posted by Heath Stewart | 2 Comments
Monday, July 07, 2008 4:43 PM

Enable BITS Logging

Enable BITS logging for diagnostic information about download failures using BITS.
Posted by Heath Stewart | 1 Comments
Attachment(s): http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/attachment/8704350.ashx
Tuesday, June 03, 2008 3:58 PM

Windows Installer 4.5 is Now Available

Windows Installer 4.5 is now available on the download center for a variety of platforms, including Windows XP SP2 and newer, Server 2003 SP1 and newer, and both Vista and Server 2008 RTM and newer. The Windows Installer 4.5 SDK is also available as a
Posted by Heath Stewart | 2 Comments
Filed under: , , ,
Friday, May 16, 2008 2:02 PM

KB944899 Should be Removed before Installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Before installing Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 , you should first uninstall KB944899 , a hotfix which improves performance when stepping through source downloaded from a source server. If KB944899 is not removed prior to Visual Studio 2008 SP1, sometime
Posted by Heath Stewart | 9 Comments
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 6:08 PM

The Release of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 will Install over SP1 Beta

One of many improvements made to Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 is that VS 2008 SP1 Beta customers will not need to uninstall SP1 Beta before installing the release of SP1. The same is true for Visual Studio 2008 Express products and .NET 3.5 SP1 -
Posted by Heath Stewart | 3 Comments
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 2:33 PM

How to Download all of Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 is comprised of multiple packages, including executables, installer packages, and patches. Compare this with Visual Studio 2005 SP1 which was a single patch wrapped in an executable. A lot of updates were made to both
Posted by Heath Stewart | 12 Comments
Monday, May 12, 2008 10:53 AM

Changes for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (Beta) has been released to web , along with Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (Beta). Included as part of .NET 3.5 SP1 are Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 (Beta) and Microsoft .NET Framework
Posted by Heath Stewart | 12 Comments
Friday, May 09, 2008 9:41 PM

Visual Studio and .NET Log Collection Utility

How to obtain and use the Visual Studio and .NET Framework log collection utility, and how to provide logs and feedback.
Posted by Heath Stewart | 9 Comments
Attachment(s): Collect.exe
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 1:36 PM

MSIZap is not Uninstall

The tool msizap.exe that is available in the Windows SDK and elsewhere on the web (remember to always download from a trusted source) is a powerful but dangerous tool that is often used to quickly and casually, and can leave your machine in a corrupted
Posted by Heath Stewart | 0 Comments
Friday, April 18, 2008 3:25 PM

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 Fails to Install

A lot of customers have recently started seeing the following errors, all stating in various ways that Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 failed to install. You may also see this when attempting to install other updates on top of .NET 2.0 SP1.
Posted by Heath Stewart | 12 Comments
Attachment(s): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0BA6038C-061E-4B4A-9BE9-96A323701260
Tuesday, April 01, 2008 3:02 PM

Windows Installer 4.5 Beta 2 Available

The Windows Installer team released Windows Installer 4.5 Beta 2 recently. While not a lot has visibly changed since the first beta for which I provided an overview , it's important to note that a new column was added to the CustomAction table since changes
Posted by Heath Stewart | 0 Comments
Friday, March 07, 2008 12:05 AM

Installing Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Tools for Visual Studio 2008

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
Posted by Heath Stewart | 3 Comments
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 3:45 PM

Another Workaround to Add New Components to Existing Features

Yesterday I described an issue when adding new components to existing, not-installed (absent) features the feature tree is installed. This can lead to prompts for source or failed installations. One workaround is to add new, top-level hidden features.
Posted by Heath Stewart | 2 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Attachment(s): Example.zip
Monday, February 18, 2008 1:40 PM

Adding New Components to Existing Features Installs the Feature Tree

As Developer Division starts to ship patches for the Visual Studio 2008 , some users are being prompted for installation source media. This is a resulting of Windows Installer needing the original source files if, for example, files are missing from disk
Posted by Heath Stewart | 6 Comments
Attachment(s): Example.zip
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 12:19 PM

Debugging Custom Actions: Leaked Handles

Debugging custom actions isn't exactly the easiest action to do; Windows Installer spawns separate processes - remoting servers - to run in-process custom actions. Any opportunity to diagnose issues without debugging can be helpful. For example, an issue
Posted by Heath Stewart | 3 Comments
More Posts Next page »
 
Page view tracker