Software Deployment

This issue bears a some similarity with that reported in this recent Appdeploy post

Take a look at my reply there (reply #6). It sounds like you might have a Unicode (UTF-8) MSI database, so obtain a copy of WILANGID.VBS and run the script against the vendors MSI to confirm whether or not this is the case.

Regards,

Spartacus

Check out the Control table. I suspect you have a weird font defined for the text. Font name and size are "embedded" in the text, enclosed in braces, e.g. {&Tahoma8}.

Thanks for the advice.

I compared the MSI to a previous version's where all dialog fonts display as expected/desired (and a random one selected from our software library) and all the "SetupProgress" entries have the same fonts defined.

Like most vendors their MSI breaks a few rules [;)] - for example, major product change from 7.x to 8.x but still the same Product Code so I don't have the greatest of faith in their MSI authoring, it's just one of those niggling issues that I'd like to solve...

Any other thoughts?

Excellent Spartacus, bang on with the codepage call, many thanks for the link and swift reply [:)]

Out of interest how did you determine that was the cause? Is it something you've experienced yourself before so you followed a sepcific line of troubleshooting, was it something you just "know," etc.

ORIGINAL: fritoz

Excellent Spartacus, bang on with the codepage call, many thanks for the link and swift reply [:)]

Out of interest how did you determine that was the cause?  Is it something you've experienced yourself before so you followed a sepcific line of troubleshooting, was it something you just "know," etc.




No problem, and thank you for the rating points :-)

Strangely enough, it was because I had recently learned that one of the new features in AdminStudio 9.5 is the ability to build unicode MSI's, and so had decided to look into it in a bit more depth ... I'm still learning though ;-)

Regards

Spartacus

Good one, thanks for the explanation.

I'm predominantly a Wise (as in Package Studio) man so it's handy to know the ways of the other (AdminStudio) side ;-)

Just figured out a possible workaround for you. If you check the ActionText and Error tables in your MSI and find they don't actually contain any localized text, then the following procedure may work for you.

1) Open the MSI in ORCA and export and then drop both the ActionText and Error tables. **

2) Run the WILANGID.VBS script as follows :

cscript wilangid.vbs <Name of Your MSI with dropped tables here> Codepage 1252

3) Reopen the MSI in ORCA, import the ActionText and Error tables from the two .IDT files created at step 1

4) Save the MSI

** I haven't tried this method using a transform, although if it works that would obviously be the way to go given that ideally vendor MSI's shouldn't be modified directly.

Regards

Spartacus

Good call again Spartacus [:)] - all dialogs are displayed as expected following your advice.

Just have to do a bit of jiggery-pokery to get the changes applied via an MST, will require the use of a few other SDK tools, MSITran.exe, etc. to achieve.

Thanks for all your help.