Software Deployment

You could either:

- Create a new transform which includes the s/c
- Re-install specifiying the new transform.
This won't be as bad as you might think since most of the components will still be present and therefore the engine will have no real work to do. Remember that this is a reinstall, not an install with ADDLOCAL, so you need REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=[your_choice_of_parameters_probably_just_'P'_ would_do]

Or, if the s/c is non-advertised, you could just push out a simple MSI containing an LNK file.

Sounds nice, except that that doesn't seem to work. I have no idea how that previous package has been broken, but even creating new shortcut with same component etc. doesn't seem to do anything. Must be rather clever way to break MSI for that not to work.

I might need to do chained-installation with that extra shortcut as .lnk

Looking at log-file there is this:

MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Modifying TRANSFORMS property. Its current value is 'C:\WINDOWS\Installer\{CDBE291A-457E-4DDD-A7AC-14D898DB6A24}\QPR8PGSetupNoReply.mst'. Its new value: 'QPR8UserMgmtSetup22.mst'.
MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding REINSTALL property. Its value is 'ALL'.
MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding REINSTALLMODE property. Its value is 'vamus'.
MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding ADDLOCAL property. Its value is 'UserManagementClient'.
MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding CURRENTDIRECTORY property. Its value is 'D:\8.0'.
MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding CLIENTUILEVEL property. Its value is '2'.
MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding CLIENTPROCESSID property. Its value is '1464'.
MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Modifying TRANSFORMS property. Its current value is 'QPR8UserMgmtSetup22.mst'. Its new value: 'C:\WINDOWS\Installer\{CDBE291A-457E-4DDD-A7AC-14D898DB6A24}\QPR8PGSetupNoReply.mst'.
MSI (s) (E8:9C) [12:09:27:612]: TRANSFORMS property is now: C:\WINDOWS\Installer\{CDBE291A-457E-4DDD-A7AC-14D898DB6A24}\QPR8PGSetupNoReply.mst

Looks like MSI reverts to original transform when doing reinstall. No matter what I do it seem to always revert back to that original .mst.

Looks like MSI reverts to original transform when doing reinstall. No matter what I do it seem to always revert back to that original .mst.

This is actually default behaviour for Windows Installer (unfortunately). I believe that when recaching local copies of your installer source, only MSI's are recached, MST's are not. So reinstalling with a different MST does not work.
Looks to me like you're facing an uninstall/reinstall. Unless you can update (read: hunt down, delete and replace with your new ones) the Windows Installer cached MSI and MST

PJ

A similar problem was discussed previously in the following appdeploy thread

http://itninja.com/question/can't-apply-transform-with-msi-reinstall

Regards,

Spartacus

ORIGINAL: spartacus

A similar problem was discussed previously in the following appdeploy thread

http://itninja.com/question/can't-apply-transform-with-msi-reinstall

Regards,

Spartacus


Found that soon after posting my problem. So it seems that this just isn't possible using MSI native methods. D*mn.

Oh, well, complete install/reinstall then. Which might not be such a bad idea anyway (that original mst does many unnecessary things, including removing those shortcuts that depend on what features are installed, instead just making feature unavailable).