Software Deployment

Just recently, I made a patch that updates a number of DLLs on target machines where my company's software is installed. I have found that, when the patch updates the associated MSI on the target machine (in the WINDOWS\Installation directory), three of the changed files end up with either a short file name only or a long file name only in the File table (rather than the expected FileNa~1.dll|FileName.dll format). Whether I end up with short or long file names seems random across trial installations. When I end up with short names only, the patch will not run because of error ept0046 ("The specified msi product could not be openned"). This has not happened to me in the multitude of other patches that I have done for the same product over the last year. My command file has not changed across patches, except for version-specific items (i.e., commands are the same).

Has anybody else seen this behavior? If so, have you figured out why it happens and how to fix it?

Thanks!