The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Wise Installer

Wise Installer - Newbie Nightmare

My latest project has turned out to be somewhat of a nightmare.

I have ported a system for one of my clients from NT4 to XP. The app was written reasonably well written and thoroughly documented. Life is good and kudos to the previous programmer.

I am now in the process of converting the installer as well. As far as I can surmise, there were no previous install issues. Jumping from FAT32 to NTFS has caused some headaches. The application works fine under the Admin account, but any User account gets access violations abound. Yikes.

So far, I have googled, looked at the newsgroups and read as much documentation as possible. And I spent a good 2 days hacking around with Wise to no avail.

I have done the following so far:
1. Moved all data files into All User\Application Data
2. Set permissions on any HKLM keys that require writing.

So, hopefully someone out there can:
* direct me to some resources on this issue
* do's/don't with Wise for COM and the registry
* any additional useful suggestions

Clearly, there is a permissions issue, but I am at my wit's end trying to figure out where it might be.

Last Straw
Friday, December 5, 2003

Funny because I'm also looking for infos on how to investigate install/running issues, and come up with good solutions to solve those issues.

One application that looks interesting and might help you out in trying to figure out why the app doesn't install is Squealer (http://www.addisonsw.com/). I'll look for more infos just to be sure, but I guess we'll order it.

Frederic Faure
Friday, December 5, 2003

I don't have any experience with Wise, but I've had very good luck with Nullsoft's NSIS. The solution to a lot of the permissions issues is that programs must be installed as the administrative user.

Place user-specific data in user-specific directories. Each user will have permission to write in their own folders under Documents and Settings. Joe User doesn't have write permission into the All Users folder, only the administrative user.

Hope this helps. Contact me offlist if you need more help.

Clay Dowling
Friday, December 5, 2003

Registry keys are also a problem.

Make sure you only try to modify the HKCU (Current User) and not HKLM (Local Machine) keys - the latter require administrator privileges.

Ori Berger
Saturday, December 6, 2003