Software Deployment

I tried disabling the shortcut property and removed the "Set key file" but the self healing shortcut doesn't stop self healing and I really need to stop this.

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
AK 

The other thing I could do is clear all of the key files in the MSI. The problem there is that this a pretty big project and i am not sure how to clear key files other than one at a time. I am using Install shield 9.

I have never used InstallShield before, so apologies if my copmments do not make sense.

The two ways (that I am aware of) to turn off advertising (self healing) are:-

1. Disable the entry point - this will be the shortcut that launches the app. If you can change the target of the shortcut from a feature to a file then this will disable advertising for this shortcut. Do this for all advertised shortcuts that are to be used.
2. The second method you have mentioned already. Remove all of the keypaths for the components. The quickest way might be to load the MSI in ORCA, goto the component table and delete all of the keypaths from there.

Method 1 will be much quicker if you can figure out how to do it (I use WinINSTALL so can opnly explain how to do it in that - someone else may know for InstallShield).

Alan

Thanks, I have already disabled advertised shortcuts using DISABLEADVTSHORTCUTS=1. As it is right now, it does not self heal when the user launches the app, it starts a self heal when they run a report within it. Probably some file is changing and I could track it down but I have been doing this now a few times after it has been tested and released into a production environment.[:@] This app renames and deletes its own exe's !!!

I'll take a look at orca , thanks.

On a side note , since M$ has a switch to shut down advertised shortcuts , I would think they would have a switch to kill self healing but I have not found this anywhere.

That's actually quite a useful tip about the DISABLEADVTSHORTCUTS property I didn't know about - might test that one out for myself. I assume you can just define this either in the Property table or on the msiexec command line(?)

Sounds like you need to delete the keypaths for those exe files that are being modified.

Alan

If it keeps self healing then its broken.
Check event manager for the reason why, then fix your package.
Turning of self healing negates the reason for having done your job in the first place imo.

You're absolutely right dbowe.

However, there are still certain situations where it would be nice to be able to turn it off. For example, with the issue I have with nested MSI installs. Self-healing fails to work correctly for an MSI that was installed as the custom action of another - therefore as a result of this limitation, I am not able to take full advantage of MSI self healing.

Even without the benefits of self healing, MSI packages will still cleanly rollback during an installation failure and uninstall themselves more cleanly than any setup.exe so there are still benefits to MSI packaging, even without the advertising.

(not to mention better version control and automated removal of previous versions of s/w during upgrades)

Alan

I agree, I would normally try to track down the issue using regmon, or filemon but this app is just geting old. It renames and deletes its own EXE's.


Yes can use DISABLEADVTSHORTCUTS from the command line or the property table.