MSI: Using regasm to register COM may cause resiliency during application launch

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Building an installer for an application in VS2005. The application consists of several dll projects and merge modules with third party references.

After the installer has been built and the application installed. Launching the application brings up a series of Windows Installer resiliency that continues for a long time before the application is finally launched.

You are registering your .Net components using the registry table by using regasm to import the registry keys manually into Visual Studio Setup project Registry editor.

 

Regasm is creating keys under HKCR\CLSID\{GUID}\Implemented Categories that have a null value (not even a default value).

The property "Always Create" for the registry keys is by default set to False. Since the HKCR\CLSID\{GUID}\Implemented Categories values are null they are not created during install.

When the application is launched, Windows installer spawns resiliency to find this registry key for each component being registered.

 

Resolution

Set the "Always Create" property for the NULL value registry keys to True.

 

 

 

Contributor : Ravi Shankar