Software Deployment

Hi Dan,
this CA sets the variables, that are passed to the CA "MMManualUninstallRegistryCleanup".
So, try to disable this CA (set a condition which is not true).
Regards, Nick

Wow right over my head there.

Ok CA is custom action got that far :-)

On the Custom action "MMSetManualUninstallRegistryCleanup" I took out the Value and Target.
I also dropped the Property entry as well.

But this is still not working for me I better go have a read up about custom actions when and where you can apply them and how they work.

ORIGINAL: p4ntb0y
On the Custom action "MMSetManualUninstallRegistryCleanup" I took out the Value and Target.
I also dropped the Property entry as well. Of course, you're doing this all in a transform and not directly editing the MSI?

What Nick was saying is that you should set an impossible-to-meet condition on the CA so that it doesn't run.

Your authoring tool will have a UI to make this a little easier but since we don't know what tool you're using so can't direct you specifically, I'll proceed as if you were using Orca, a free d/l (as part of the Windows Installer SDK) which can be used to edit MSI tables directly, with no UI "in the way".

Note that others may have a different modus operandi, but I find this method works for me:

- open the MSI in Orca
- click 'Transform/New Transform'
- In the Property table, create a new property called, say, CA_BYPASS
- Set its value to 1
- Find the 'MMManualUninstallRegistryCleanup' CA in either the 'InstallExecuteSequence' or 'InstallUISequence' table (much more likely to be the former)
- In that table, find the column 'Condition' and, in the row for the CA, type in 'IF CA_BYPASS = 0' (without the single quote marks)
- save the resulting file ('File/Save Transformed As...')

What you've done here is to tell the CA to only run if the property CA_BYPASS has a value of 0. SInce you hard-code that property to be '1', that CA will never run. The reason I use this method is so that if at some time you want to restore that CA, you can just delete the condition or set the property to '0'.

Thanks for the indepth explantion.

I am using ORCA and I added a PROPERTY of " CA_BYPASS " with a value of "1 "

I then searched for "'MMManualUninstallRegistryCleanup'" and then found that value in "InstallExecuteSequence" i changed the value of this from "(REMOVE = "ALL") And (Not UPGRADINGPRODUCTCODE)" to " IF CA_BYPASS = 0 "
Now I understand that the custom action that calls "MMSetManualUninstallRegistryCleanup" will then never run as the condition is never met is this right?

I saved my MST and crossed my fingers but I am getting an....
Internal error 2717 "MMSetManualUninstallRegistryCleanup"
I take it that the 2717 error is a bad Custom Action call

sorry about this guys I need to get up to speed on all this

You dont need the word "IF" in the conditon field, just use CA_BYPASS=0

Regards,

Spartacus

Apologies...my bad. I forgot I was instructing in Orca.

Moving on:
- You should ADD the condition, rather than replacing it. Thus, you should have:

(REMOVE ~= "ALL") And (Not UPGRADINGPRODUCTCODE) And (CA_BYPASS = 0)

- The above existing conditions suggest that the CA in question is only being executed when the product is being uninstalled. I think a different CA is causing your problem. Nevertheless, you can add the same condition (CA_BYPASS = 0) to whichever CA is causing the problem.

Hi I changed that to drop the IF statement this installed but still called the Custom action about closing MS Office.

I think you're right VBScab whats the best way to track the CA thats causing this?

I am googling as i write this :-)

Wow learning so much this week :-)

Hi Dan,
how about a search for "office" in the MSI's CA table?
I can find exact one row with this word in it...
And there is also a condition 'UILevel > "2"' on the action sequence in the InstallExecuteSequence table, which means:
It will only be run with a non silent install!
Regards, Nick

this is the title of the warning i get...

"Mindjet MindManager 6 installation warning"
which tells me to "Please close all Microsoft Office Applications"
searching for that string i get "LOCALIZED_ERROR_OFFICEEXEINUSE" in the property with the value being the message I recieve.

I then looked in the Custom actions table and found "MMCheckOfficeEXEInUse" I searched for this in "InstallExecuteSequence" and found this row...

MMCheckOfficeEXEInUse UILevel > "2" 418

So I have to change something here right? do I add to the value with "AND CA_BYPASS=0" ?

More to read up on now about UILevel

Hi Dan,
So I have to change something here right? do I add to the value with "AND CA_BYPASS=0" ?
You got it :-)
Regards, Nick

ORIGINAL: p4ntb0y
whats the best way to track the CA thats causing this? The tools from the two main protagonists (Wsie and InstallShield) in MSI authoring have built-in debuggers in which you can run the project and pause execution by setting breakpoints and so on. If you're not using one of these tools, you can use DebugView. Google for 'DebugView' for details.

Also, I *believe* I may have mentioned once or twice before that, IMO, you cannot do this job without a process/file/registry monitor. ProcMon from SysInternals (now subsumed into Microsoft) combines all 3 functions.

Well this is working all fine now many thanks!

Thanks for the tips VBScab sysinternals is one of my best tools.

I actually just added "CA_BYPASS=0" I will now know what to do in the future to disable something like this.

Many thansk for the help guys I learn't quite a bit this last week god 2 months ago I did not even know how to do a silent install from msiexec.