Collection of Useful Posts

There are several methods to uninstall the existing older versions of an application e.g. Script, MSI upgrade table, SCCM deployment conditions. We are here discussing the method using Upgrade table. Upgrade table can be used effectively to detect and uninstall the previous versions of a MSI based application provided the upgrade code is known. Here is an example on populating Upgrade Table: Locate the U pgradeCode in Property Manager . Remember this could either be same or different in previous version and if it is different then grab the code from previous version. Go to the Upgrade Table in Direct Editor . Copy the upgrade code to its column. Populate the Version columns based on requirement (consider all the digits as per previous MSI versions). Attribute column needs to be configured with appropriate bit flag for corresponding upgrade behavior. Refer to  Upgrade Table  to calculate the proper bit flag. In example, 768 is the sum of 256+512 which m...

Active setup provides a solution when the aim is to deliver user based components when no advertised entry points exist in an MSI package. Most packages will contain some kind on entry point; commonly an advertised shortcut. When launching this kind of shortcut Windows Installer will check the keypath of the component the shortcut belongs to and verifies that the component is installed. If it is found to be missing Windows Install will kick off a repair. This provides a great solution for installing current user data when the package is not installed in the user context. It is also a very good reason why you should never mix machine and user data in the same feature. So what do you do if there are no shortcuts to advertise? Active Setup will solve the problem. An MSI package has been created to install an Outlook plug-in. This package installs both user and machine data. User preferences are stored as a combination of HKCU registry and a XML file written to %USERPROFILE%. As t...

The issue on many blogs and articles is around creating the 'deployment.config' and 'deployment.properties' files for an enterprise deployment.  In my case i wanted to set the security level to 'Medium', but everytime I open the Java control panel it was set to the default HIGH setting. Solution  1 Create the following directory path 'C:\Windows\sun\java\deployment' 2 Create a file called 'deployment.config' in this directory and open with Notepad. Copy the two line below #################### deployment.system.config = file\:\\C\:\\WINDOWS\\Sun\\Java\\Deployment\\deployment.properties deployment.system.config.mandatory = true #################### 3 Create a file called 'deployment.properties' in this directory and open with Notepad. Copy the four line below (# deployment.security.level.locked optional) ###################### deployment.security.level=MEDIUM deployment.browser.path=C:\Progr...