WiseUser's blog

If an application contains the odbc driver settings, use Retain Registry information as is in setup capture settings. If we capture the driver details as odbc drivers in Wise it will throw an installation error, to overcome this issue capture everything in registry as is and delete the odbc driver entry from odbc section in Wise.

Use Kill Process before installing and Uninstalling any application over an upgrade

MSI logging can be expanded beyond installs and uninstalls.  It can also record any MSI action, such as repairs or self-heals.  Setting up a system policy to enable MSI logging can do this.   Since policies are presented locally as registry entries, use these steps to do it:

Special characters in many cases are reserved in an install, and getting them to display or write to a destination computer requires some extra steps.

Using a property:

This is handy when working with large special characters,

Removing files is done when a package needs to clean up items a prior package left behind, such as deleting a Bloom.ini file from an earlier release. 

Follow these steps to have a package remove a file :

1. Launch Wise, open the appropriate WSI or application MST and go into the Setup Editor
2. Switch to the Tables tab

Component errors can happen from time-to-time, especially with setup captures. We need to know to look for them.  Here’s how to check an install for a component error:

1. Launch Wise and go into the Setup Editor

2. Switch to the Components tab

3. Any components with errors will be displayed in Red

Command line to apply multiple transforms:

Msiexec.exe /i {path}.msi TRANSFORMS=T1.mst;t2.mst

The following are the best practices recommended by Microsoft in creation of a package. It's a good list to keep handy.