>Thanks Ed for another fine answer. What actually triggered this question was that recently I double clicked a windows installer package and it did an install (I am not sure I answered with a yes). After installation the Easy CD creator stopped working and I had to do a reinstall of it. McAfee VirusShield would not startup after a reboot and I did a couple of reinstalls but to noavail. Both of them use Windows Installer.
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>Any ideas of what I might have done?
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It's likely that you fired up an .MSI and installed the application. One advantage to Windows Installer is that it is transactional - if it fails, it will at least make a serious attempt to restore the software state of the machine prior to the install, and if properly designed, it will prompt to go out and find missing/optional components that are associated with the install. In virtually all cases, the install is reversible (at least if no other product that competes for resources on the machine has updated components or dependent registry entries).
Windows Installer also offers a repair facility as a part of it's design; rather than reinstalling McAfee, I'd try repairing the installation. Failing that, roll back whatever you accidentally installled and try to recover your environment.
Since you are running Win2K, you can use the Win2K System Restore Utility to roll back the state of the system to prior to the install.
>>>What is the difference between windows installer and visual studio installer. What if any are required on my w2k machine?
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>>Windows Installer is an installer technology adopted by MS and most of the industry to provide a standard means of transactional installation of apps and updates. The components used with the Windows Installer are generally handled by any Windows Installer compatible installation product - the same MSM that contains a particlar ActiveX component, perhaps with some set of dependent components and a description of its dependencies and installation requirements, is able to be used generally by any of the compatible install products.
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>>Visual Studio Installer is an MS-provided Windows Installer compliant installation product.
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>>There are standard Windows Installer components that will be needed; they're supplied when you load VSI (or another compliant Windows Installer product like InstallShield Express 3.0 or later). The necessary Windows Installer technology files are then included with your install distribution; part of that install distribution's task will be to ensure that the target system has the proper Windows Installer modules in place, or will install them as a part of installing your application.
