Software Deployment

Assuming you've triple checked the command line and it is installing with the transform...

Hmmm... transform sets only some features to install but they all show up. Check the property table for an ADDLOCAL property both in the MSI and your MST, if it's set to ALL it will install all features and that might be overriding the features you've set in the transform.

If that's fruitless, I'd check through the properties table and the MSI script to make sure there is nothing in there which would override your transform. i.e. a property being set such as TRANSFORM or some property that your transform changes.

Yeah, i've run the msiexec command probably a dozen times, and even referenced the microsoft site in case I missed something.

There's no ADDLOCAL property that I can find. I see nothing referencing a transform at all.

To clarify the problem, there are 4 features that I'm trying to install. When I run the msi manually & go through the install, they install fine. When I create a response transform w/ the same options, when I apply it, 5 features install, 3 of which I did not specify.

[:@]

FINALLY got it [:D]

After attempting a cartwheel down the hall way and failing miserably, I figured I should probably follow up on this post.

The problem was that the response MST that both Wise and installsheild were creating wasn't capturing the right changes during the setup. I built the transform manually and it worked fine.

I figured it out after digging through the Properties field as VikingLoki suggested. It clicked that one of the property names matched the names given in the setup.ini in the original setup.exe wrapper that I extracted this MSI from. I looked in the documentation and found the options it listed for editing the setup.ini for doing a silent install with the setup.exe. I spent 2 hours forking around with no success until I went to their site. Turns out that the documentation is totally wrong. The site had the updated commands to enter in the ini file, which subsiquently worked when I entered them manually into the property field of the transform.

Still with me? I don't know if that made any sense.

The bottom line is that all that the ini file does in this case is pass parameters to the msi when you run the setup.exe. You can also enter those same parameters into the property field of a transform.

The original transform was applying, it just wasn't specifying what components to install. It was defaulting to the entire client.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction Viking.

Gotta love the Property table.

Way to go! I was stumped when I read your first post, before Viking's response.

Glad I could help. I've had some frustrating days over the same thing, a pesky unexpected property that changes everything.

If you haven't done this already, go through the MSI Script and look for that property. Take a mental picture of how it fits into the script and remember it as an anomoly. That way if you run into this sort of thing again, you can go through the MSI Script sections and hopefully you'll spot something that trips the "What the %$#@ is that" flag in your mind. Then you can play the "follow the property" game and make the connection of where it comes from and how it's used in the condition fields. With that you can get by even without the vendor's documentation or confirm that the docs are wrong.

Is there a way of discovering what properties change when you select different options during setup?

ie. In RightFax, one component that I needed to install was FaxUtility, and after reading the documentation, (the CORRECT documentation) I discovered that the INSTALL_UTL property controled this.

Is there a way to discover all the available properties like INSTALL_UTIL? It would make creating transforms much easier.

That sounds like a Windows Installer debugging utility, I don't think one exists. (Hmmm... an unfilled market demand?)

To get a list of all available properties, launch the MSI install with a verbose log (the /l*v [filename] option). All the properties will be listed at the end. This can be a PIA with setup.exe bootstrapped apps when you really need it most though. If the bootstrap doesn't give you a verbose log option, well you see the problem. Also this will only give you the property name and value, sometimes that isn't enough info but it gives you something to search for.

Without that, every property that makes any sort of difference will be referenced in the MSI scripts. Browse through them for IF statements, the extra properties will probably pop up in there and you can see what will happen depending on their values.

BTW - Just so happens I was tearing my hair out today w/ same problem for version 9. Lo and behold the answer is the same! What luck!

I have gotten the documenation from their web site with the properties but still cannot get my install to work when I add the properties to the mst using Installshield. Can you tell me which documentation I should be looking at?

ORIGINAL: VikingLoki

That sounds like a Windows Installer debugging utility, I don't think one exists. (Hmmm... an unfilled market demand?)




Actually Installshield has one built into their MSI Editor. Never used it, but there you go.