>My client advises that VFP 7 install fails on Citrix (using default Installshield Express shipped with VFP). It seems to be related to a drive mapping problem. No such issues with VFP 6.
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More than likely, the client is having a problem going into administrative installer mode putting up the app. They may have to perform the install from the local server console under an administrative account from the application publisher; at least, that's been the case with some VFP 7 distributions I did for systems running MetaFrame XP.
>Also on some Win2000 machines we get a Windows Installer is out of date message.What the heck is a Windows Installer?
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The Windows Installer is the underlying technology used to put components in their places for Windows systems. Its first major appearance came with Visual Studio Installer; it's been wholeheartedly integrated by nearly every one of the installer vendors because of the tremendous flexibility it offers, not to mention the fact that it gets things like side-by-side deployment, safe version updating, cross-platform privilege and file location placement right. MS products like Office, all the current OS deployments, and stuff built by Wise, InstallShield and VSI in their current incarnations use it. Since it allows for selective component deployment, piecemeal distribution, conditional web-deployed component installation, and it is transactional, so that if it smokes in the middle it knows how to fix itself, it seems to have been almost universally adopted.
In Win2K and XP, the Installer is a part of the OS distribution itself. You may be seeing issues where people have not kept their systems up-to-date through the application of SPs and the use of the Windows Update site. If your IS package did not include the Windows Installer modules themselves, then it relies on what it finds on the system, and coughs up a lung if the installer is missing or out-of-date. Including the modules with your install, and better, having clients keep their systems up-to-date, are the best cures.
Failing to use Windows Installer with 2K and XP systems is poor judgement at best, and can result in busted installs, or worse, busted systems if someone forces through the OS protections on key Windows folders to put an older version of a component where
they think it ought to go, rather than where Windows wants to put it. We aren't playing in DOS or Win 3.x, and we aren't deploying in a managed code environment.
But then, maybe the stubborn guys who want to 'roll their own' installer are a lot smarter than us...
