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Wise Installation Studio 7 - Windows 7 compatibility

Created: 19 Nov 2009 | 1 comment
JohanH's picture
5 Agree
0 Disagree
+5 5 Votes
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I know that Wise Installation Studio 7 SP1 does not have support for Windows 7, but I want to report this particular problem in hope that it gets fixed in an upcoming Service Pack.

Product:
Wise Installation Studio 7 SP1 with latest patches/hotfixes.

Environment:
Wise Installation Studio 7 SP1
Windows 7

Description of the problem:

Program Compatibility Assistant appears when running an .exe with prerequisites on Windows 7

Problem/Symptoms:

I have created an MSI compiled into a single file exe. There are prerequisites added and I have edited the prerequisites script. The PCA (Program Compatibility Assistant) in Windows 7 appears when runing the setup. It does this if the setup file is named anything else than setup.exe.

There is a knowledgebase article that mentions this problem in Vista when installing from a network place, but it says it is fixed in version 7 SP1. https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=34576&p=1

I have read that the PCA has changed a lot in Windows 7, so that is probably why nobody else have reported this yet (Windows 7 is quite new). I found some info on the issues here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/05/17/...
http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/10/15/...

According to instructions by Microsoft, I added supportedOS to the application manifest (in the stub folder of Wise Package editor), but this did not help. The PCA is still popping up.

This is how the manifest looks like now (verified by extracting it from the installation package by mt.exe):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
    <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
        <security>
            <requestedPrivileges>
                <requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" />
            </requestedPrivileges>
        </security>
    </trustInfo>
    <compatibility xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:compatibility.v1">
        <application>
            <!--Windows 7-->
            <supportedOS Id="{35138b9a-5d96-4fbd-8e2d-a2440225f93a}" />
            <!--Windows Vista-->
            <supportedOS Id="{e2011457-1546-43c5-a5fe-008deee3d3f0}" />
        </application>
    </compatibility>
</assembly>

I am sure the manifest works, because I made a test with two dummy setups, one with my modified manifest and one with the original Wise manifest. The setup with my modified manifest did not trigger PCA, whereas the setup with the original manifest did trigger the PCA. This also indicates that there is something else in my setup that triggers the PCA and I am quite sure it is the runtime stub, as described in the knowledgebase article linked above.

I also tried to add an entry to Add or Remove Programs to prevent the PCA from popping up, but it didn't help. For now, my solution is to rename the setup file to setup.exe.

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Comments

pbishop's picture
23
Nov
2009
0 Votes 0
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Hi.  I also encountered this

Hi.  I also encountered this same problem.  I am new to installing since they let go of our install guy because of the economy.  So there is no other way around this other then renaming your install to setup.exe?