Creating a Device driver based package in Installshield

It is very easy and simle to create a device driver based application from Installshield.
I am using Installshield 2012.

You need to make sure that the driver is a signed driver. If the driver is not signed, then you need to sign the driver first. It is good to have your driver signed, but you can install and unsigned driver as well. Check an option later.

Go to Installshield Wizard in Installation Designer and click on Project button on top an then Device Driver wizard.

Click Next ->

Select the path to your .inf file on your machine. Choose the system architecture. I am choosing x64 as I am packaging for 64 bit machines.

Click Next-> Next->

Select the options as per your requirement. I have chosen the above ones.

Click Next->

Click Next->

You will get the summary and then click on Finish.

It will add the settings in your component of INF file.

Hope this helps you create device driver easily with Installshield.

Installshield Build Error Code 0

I was facing this issue with Installshield 2012 SP1. I had installed this product with AdminStudio 11.

When I converted the MSI to .ism project through Installshield and then tried to build it back to MSI, I always got this error code 0.

I could not find any documentation for this online so wrote back to Installshield Customer Support and they came up with this work around. Hope this will help you if you are facing this similar issue with your product. Do let me know by commenting if this has helped you. Just want to know how many people are affected by this,


Within the .ism project:

Go to the Direct Editor under the Additional Tools section.
Select the InstallShield table.
Change the SchemaVersion property from 772 to 771.
Save, close, and reopen the project.
InstallShield will prompt asking if you want to upgrade the project.
Click Yes to upgrade the project.

You should now be able to build the project without error.


Apprantly this is the issue with this release of the product only and it has been fixed with the later releases.

Shortcut creation issue in Installshield/WISE Package Studio

IIS Express 7.5 is a vendor MSI package and the MSI is created by WiX. Though there is no problem as such while

customizing this application, but I found an issue while adding a shortcut to this application.
While creating IIS Express 7.5 package recently, I faced an issue that I was not able to add shortcut in this

application.

This for the matter of fact I realized that the shortcut table did not exist in this application. The error which

I was getting was "Field shortcut of table shortcut: Error retrieving shortcut of table"
To get this error fixed, I added the shortcut table and following entries in _Validation table:

After adding this I added CreateShortcuts Action in InstallExecuteSequence Table at Sequence 4500. This was

because, since there was no shortcut table, the sequence too was missing from MSI. Due to this the shortcut was

not getting created.

Once I did both these things, the application is installed fine with the shorcut.

This can be used with other missing tables as well. We need to add the entries in _Validation table for all the

tables which are missing for its every corresponding column.

Hope this will help you if you face similar issue in future.

Context Menu for WinMerge appliction in x64

WinMerge application has the same source for x86 and x64 machines.
The application works fine when packaged in MSI for x86, but the same application will not work on x64 as the context menu option will not be visible. To get the context menu option, follow these steps:
1) Install the source on 64 bit machine and from INSTALLDIR, copy the ShellExtensionx64.dll file.
2) Register this Dll file and keep its registry information in a reg file.
3) The 32 bit version of this ShellExtension is ShellExtensionU.dll, hence make the component of this .dll conditionalized to be installed only on 32 bit machines. For this you can write the Condition as: (VersionNT32)
4) Create a 64 bit component and import ShellExtensionx64.dll and its registry in it. The condition to make this component install only in 64 bit machines is: (VersionNT64)
5) Also keep in mind to launch the application before taking a second snapshot of the application. This will include some HKCU registry keys which go in HKCU\Software\Thingamahoochie\WinMerge
This is important as a registry is created in this hive, ContextMenuEnabled=1, which enables the context menu in the application.