Thank you very much for the response. While your right installshield doesn't have a built in switch that's easy to throw to get it to overwrite files. There is a global setting that can be changed which does work. The drawback is that it then affects all files of all setups that you create. For me that's not a problem because the setup that I'm working on needs to always overwrite every file anyway.

But here's what I found. You have to change the SETUP.INI configuration file which can be found in the SUPPORT folder where Express is installed. In the STARTUP section you change the CmdLine to read:

CmdLine = REINSTALLMODE=amus

This will cause all the installations made with express always overwrite files regardless of version or date/time stamp. Probably not the ideal solution for everyone, but it worked well for what I needed.

I got to tell you I was very surprised that this was so hard to find.

Thanks again,
Don Knoup


>The short answer is, you can't do that with the version of InstallShield Express that comes with VFP. This is not really a fault of InstallShield; the limitation is due to Windows Installer file versioning rules, which it sounds like you've already discovered (modified date vs. date created, etc.).
>
>Newer versions of InstallShield Express have an 'always overwrite' feature that enables you to mark files that should always be overwritten during install. I think this started with InstallShield Express X (ten). Anyway it's present in X, 11, 11.5, and the brand new 12 as well. See http://macrovision.com/products/flexnet_installshield/installshield/features/all_by_version.html for the product comparison chart.
>
>Of course, if you use an installer that doesn't generate MSI (Windows Installer) setups, then you're not constrained by the Windows Installer file versioning rules.
>
>-Rick
>
>
>>I was able to find that it apparently compares the created date on the file to the modified date of the file on the target machine to determine whether or not it should overwrite. If the created date is less than the modified date on the target machine it will not overwrite? Surely there must be away around this? Any ideas that could be provided would be very greatly appreciated.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Don
>>
>>>I need to get my installation to always overwrite files regardless of the dates. How do I configure my installation with Install Shield Express for Visual FoxPro 9 so that it will ignore the dates on the files and just overwrite no matter what?
>>>
>>>Thanks!
>>>
>>>-Don