Hi Robert,

I wish I had read your post on how to undo a failed install before I reformatted my friend's hard drive! I still get ribbed about that fiasco!

Hugh

>I have to agree with Hugh. I have a client who is selling an app that I wrote. I rarely have problems supporting the app but installation has been a nightmare. We've tested installing on XP, W2k and W98 in our office and never had a problem but out in the field it has been a different story. One of the main problems has been somehow an installation fails but then won't stop trying to install. It is a royal pain to get it killed. You can remove the Inprogress key from the registry but the install still keeps going. Invariably some process has hold of msi.exe and won't let go. And that process is set to auto start in services so it is a never-ending cycle. You have to delete the Inprogress Key, find the relevant process, stop it and set it to Manual start, then reboot, then remove the failed install, then reinstall and pray it doesn't fail. Walking an end user through this over the phone takes some time, to say the least. Task Manager usually is not sufficient to find the relevant
>process so I send them a tool Process Explorer that is much better at sleuthing active processes.
>
>Is the version that ships with VFP 8 based on InstallSheld Developer V8.0, or can you say?
>I hope so.
>
>
>
>>Hi Hugh!
>>
>>Honestly, it was easy to create a messed-up install with the version of InstallShield Express shipped with VFP 7.
>>
>>Having said that, the version that ships with VFP 8 ROCKS! Now all of the VC and other dependencies have been built in; when you choose the VFP runtimes the other files are sucked into your setup automatically.
>>
>>Furthermore, support for running EXEs after setup (the old post-setup executables) has returned.
>>
>>Finally, you can now create upgrade setups which can be set to upgrade specific components without hosing your client's data or other files.
>>
>>And all of this new functionality is included without additional charge with VFP 8 (coming soon!)
>>
>>Give it a second chance. If you still have beefs with ISE after using the new version, please contact me at jkoziol@microsoft.com and I'll do everything I can to assist.
>>
>>>
>>>I know it's a bit perjorative to just come right out and say what we all know about InstallShield. But I just had to do it.
>>>
>>>Let me tell you a little bit about my first experience with it...
>>>
>>>When I first saw that VFP7 included InstallShield, frankly I was stoked! I had hacked my share of VFP installations in the past and I figured a professional product like IS had to be better than that.
>>>
>>>Now I don't really use the Installation builder that much in the first place. The majority of my work is at client's locations on in-house applications. All I normally do is refresh the EXE file and that's it for me, but I've had this desire lately to create some share-ware apps and I that's why seeing InstallShield in the box really excited me.
>>>
>>>So I built this little WebCalendarBuilder application using VFP7. What it does is it helps you build your calendar and posts them up to the site of your choosing. The bundled app comes with an example calendar that includes a ton of event pages (one per event).
>>>
>>>My first experience using IS was miserable (to say the least). Here's what happened:
>>>
>>>First IS runs really, really slowly. I swear they must be using Access as their data table because when it tried to suck my 200 files into the build, the damn thing almost died! Can you believe that? Sucking in 200 files would take 5 minutes? Unbelievable!!!
>>>
>>>Next (after stumbling around their largely undocumented interface -most of which is blocked until you buy an upgrade) I finally built my build. So I burnt it on a CD.
>>>
>>>Since I wanted to test my install on a "clean machine" (one without any VFP runtime files, etc.) I enlisted a friend who said I could use his laptop for my experiment. What a huge mistake that turned out to be! For some reason the install failed (why? I have absolutely no idea -I think it was missing a .dll that MS needed to perform the install), then I couldn't restart the machine. It kept reverting back to the failed installation but wouldn't go any farther.
>>>
>>>I ended up having to reformat the guy's harddrive. It literally took me weeks to replace all the support files that his machine needed to operate without blowing up! What a freaking nightmare!!!
>>>
>>>Of course somewhere along the line I go on the IS support site and what a joke that site is. At that time there was absolutely NO help for VFP coders. In fact there was no response to my request that they make a site for VFP coders. Is there any now?
>>>
>>>So, since I will never run InstallShield again for the reasons cited above I had to find a suitable replacement. Here's where my story gets better.
>>>
>>>I found this little installer called Astrum Installer. Here's the link:
>>>
>>>http://www.thraexsoftware.com/aiw/
>>>
>>>This is a great little program. It's fast, flexible, does a great build and at a $35 registration is way cheap!
>>>
>>>Now if I were you (and I just may be), I'd dump InstallShield and go with these guys. InstallShield doesn't need us and frankly, we don't need them either.
>>>
>>>#END_OF_RANT
>>>
>>>Hugh