UPDATE 6/12/2014: We have released the final version of this extension – v1.0.0.0. This release addresses:
- Warnings when building with Microsoft.bcl.async
- Error 2727 occuring with more than 1 content file
- Some cases of the 0x8000000A when using the command line
Unfortunately we couldn’t address all cases of the command line issue for this release as we’re still investigating the appropriate way to address them. What we do have is a workaround that we believe will work for almost all of them. If you are still suffering this issue then you can try to change the DWORD value for HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0_Config\MSBuild\EnableOutOfProcBuild registry value to 0. If this doesn’t exist you can create it as a DWORD.
UPDATE 5/27/14: As we progress towards an RTM release for our extension, we wanted to let you know that we just posted the 0.9.1.0 version to the Visual Studio Gallery. In fact you should be getting a notification in your Notification Hub and/or the Extensions & Updates dialog right about now.
This version addresses a number issues reported by customers including:
- Error 1001 – InstallUtilLib.dll, custom installer actions failure
- Cases of an un-closable modal dialog appearing
- Builds causing the VS Repair dialog to appear
Please try this extension update and let us know if it doesn’t address the above, and of course about any other issues that you find.
We have heard many customers express the desire that we bring back support for Visual Studio Installer projects. In fact this was one of the topmost voted on suggestions on User Voice for Visual Studio and with this extension release we hope to address your feedback both here on the blog and on UserVoice.
We’re happy today to announce the preview availability of the Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension. This preview release provides support for Visual Studio Installer projects in Visual Studio 2013. You can download the extension from the Visual Studio Gallery.
To use this extension you can either open the Extensions and Updates dialog, select the online node and search for “Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension” or you can click here to go directly to the Visual Studio Gallery page that hosts the control.
Once you have finished installing the extension and restarted Visual Studio you will be able to open existing Visual Studio Installer Projects or create new ones.
Our intention with this extension is to give those of you with Visual Studio Installer projects the same functionality that you currently have in Visual Studio 2010. This extension enables those customer who aren’t using Visual Studio Installer projects to have ISLE as their preferred installer project solution and those who are to have support for both ISLE and their existing Visual Studio Installer projects. While the extension is not localized it is fully supported on both localized and English versions of Visual Studio.
For those of you looking for an improved deployment experience in Visual Studio we are continuing our partnership with Flexera to provide InstallShield Limited Edition (ISLE) as our in-box solution. ISLE is a great solution for those customers looking for added capabilities not found in Visual Studio Installer Projects, such as TFS and MSBuild integration, support for creating new web sites and ISO 19770-2 Tagging support, etc.
This release is a Preview version and we’d like to hear from you about any issues you have in using this with your existing Visual Studio Installer projects. We expect to release the final RTM version of this after we have addressed your feedback. So please try it out and give us general feedback via UserVoice and bugs via the Q&A section on the Visual Studio Gallery.



Very well done! Thank you very much!
So this is not compatible with Visual Studio 2012?
Good to see that user feedback can make a difference, this is a welcome return
Thanks a lot!!! We have been waiting for that a long time…We need simple installers capable of COM Addins for Visio
GREAT! I will upgrade to 2013 Right AWAY!
This is indeed the best update ever! I can now use VS2013. Best news since the wheel was invented. Thanks. A lot!!!
Excellent news… good timing also as we just updated to vs2013… We were trying wix but that was a mess…
Great news.
what about VS2012?
This is excellent news, thank you for listening!
That warm fuzzy feeling inside when you know you've done right by your customers is priceless. It's a bit like the dude who demoed the return of the start menu at the BUILD conference – you could almost feel his internal tears of joy when the audience stood up and applauded, confirming that it was the right thing to do.
Just think how amazing you guys will feel when you address the even bigger issue of the universally disliked UI changes introduced in 2012 (namely the monochrome icons and SCREAMING menus)!
Now we just need the good old deployment project back
Now we just need the good old deployment project back
Great news! Finally! Thank you very much!
Thank you very much!
The lack of support for the installer projects in VS 2012 and VS 2013 forced us to learn to use the WIX installer. And that was a good lesson, we will continue to use it because its great flexibility.
Well, the good news is that you listened. The not so good news is that it took two years. And you closed the ironically named "UserVoice" vote on the topic.
And you persist in trying to present the Installshield Hobbled Edition as something that we should be grateful for.
So we're glad at this step, but the whole episode has been handled poorly.
I've not yet tried it, but finger's crossed, this sounds like VERY good news. Let's see!
Thank you, but we switched to Advanced Installer long time ago and there is no turning back…
Wow! Although it was terrible that it was removed in the first place, but this is why I argue with strictly open source fanatics who only appreciate open source because it's free. You pay for a premium product, and the producers actually listen! Thank you guys!
Thank you! I think it's a good compromise for all parties as I understand that you need to respect your partnership with Flexera. Well done! Overall you guys at MS are heading in a good direction.
Thank you very much for this.
Now we can finally upgrade to VS2013 – as LOB developers, this is a major issue. Business don't run consumer software from consumer app stores (yet).
ISLE, unfortunately is *not* such "a great solution" – in fact, it sucks. Everybody would be using it instead of "VS Setup Project" if were nearly as good as the original setup project. There are basic things that it cannot do, and the mechanism for obtaining it for all your developers in your team is equally poor.
The "partnership" between VS and ISLE should either be proper or none at all.
I am amazed that you guys thought that you could get away with removing this tool from the beginning. It's like removing all tools from a kitchen and ask a chef too serve you the best food ever. No wait! you gave us ISLE. Let me rephrase: it's like removing all tools from a kitchen, break the tools and put 'em back and then ask a chef to cook you a great meal.
Having the old installer back is definately good news.
Thanks alot!
Praise the Sun!
I took more time to convince you that it had to, but i'm still very very glad that in the end you gave what many of us where asking.
Thanks, i'll install it pronto
That's really good to hear.
1)I had a solution for a problem and
2) Microsoft starts hearing to user voice
Thanks!
It's not a "wow" as many (paid?) people say. Installer project EXIST BEFORE in a VS! And a key question is: who is that smarty, who REMOVED so necessary feature even not discussing this with developers?? Why he is not fired? Why MS keep stupids on a management position and these goddamn "supermanagers" is NOT RESPONSIBLE for their faults? As you guess, these "managers" still sit in chair as a timer bomb and hell knows what their asshead will "decide" tomorrow!
So not, it's not a "wow", it's "heh, AT LAST bloatsoft realized they kill itself and turn back".
Good stuff. If I understand correctly, this is a revival of the old format. I appreciate the effort involved, but a friendly front end with WiX underlying it would be ideal and I hope that lies in the future. That would give developers the simplicity, plus MSBuild support, plus the ability to get down into the WiX code underneath if simple turns out not to be powerful enough.
Great news. Thank you very much VSPT.
Visual Studio Deployment Projects are horrible and should have never been brought back. Anyone who wants it back and thinks it's a good idea clearly doesn't know a damn thing about Windows Installer.
Or need Pro?
Thank you! Seems to work and meets a real need. I'm not sorry to have learned WiX since 2010, but will go here first for most deployment scenarios.
Awesomeness, thank you!!
Great! Most time I just need to create a simple installer fast.
Every time I try to build an MSI I get a VS 2013 repair. Event Viewer says:
Detection of product '{9C593464-7F2F-37B3-89F8-7E894E3B09EA}', feature 'Visual_Studio_Professional_x86_enu' failed during request for component '{CBB86C09-565A-43CF-9120-9D45AE3374CA}'
Wow, the awesomeness of this post is beyond measure!!
… amazing timing. Sensational news. I can stop scratching my head now:)
ISLE?! Meh, after beeing pushed to learn WIX and made a ton of reusable templates, I think I'll stick with it, but thanks.
Thanks very much indeed for bringing this functionality back, I'm delighted that UserVoice feedback has been listened to. This'll be a very welcome feature to the community!
thanks!
Microsoft should add file/folder permissions for target machine, in this installer project. Because when we create setup with access database or any file in which we need to write data, it creates read-write permission error.
Great flashback!
Last week, I have learned WIX.
I do not regret it, and recommend it.
It is on this day that I can say goodbye to VS2010. (but still using VS2008 for WEC)
thanks for hear us
iam using visual basic 2012 but hard to find who can learn me to be great deplovment
Thanks for listening.
It's a sad day when we have to praise Microsoft for restoring a feature they should never have removed in the first place. I appreciate that they're listening now. But why haven't they been listening for the past 4 years?
This was the number 1 showstopper preventing teams like mine from upgrading from VS2010. Now if only the UI design could return to the VS2010 style, and the "pending changes" dialog box could be made useful again, we might have a Visual Studio that's worth upgrading to.
Good! I can't believe you guys removed this to begin with, how annoying!!
Good! Glad to hear this, the InstallShield edition that ships with VS isn't even worth spending time learning, it's so ridiculously limited, I can't believe you guys decided to do away with the installer projects to begin with. Instead of getting rid of something, why not improve it? 😛
This is what my team was hoping for! Now we're upgrading to VS2013.
This is excellent. Would Microsoft be willing to add this to the open source collection? It isn't a revenue stream for them now, just a cost. It might be a good foundation to build on though for those of us that are a bit weary of the current "in the box" solution for deployment.
This should have been a wrapper around WiX, with a migration path from the old to the new as part of a project conversion process.
Wow, have you got a quote for full version of InstallShield, it cost a magnitude of order more than the entire VS suite. So who made the decision to do that! Why would VS not have an MSI builder with basic capabilities for features like setting the program data sub folder permissions, install time selectable target installation and program data folder locations, etc… basic needs, completely neglected from a major development environment. Disappointed to say the least.
Good news, even late for me as I spent $1k for Advanced Installer.
But the good news is, that MS is maybe starting to listen to developers again.
ToDo list to VS better is long, on the top list is definitelly UI, color icons, color scheme, not screaming menu.
Look forward for next good news from MS Dev.
Did an ISLE Windows Installer build of a fairly complex composite app and kept getting the famous 'Program has stopped working Windows is collecting more information……' message on launch. Posted messages on the VS forum and got no help from MS. Re-did the build with a VS2010 installer and launch ran perfectly. Burned a lot of development time on this fiasco.
Thank you very much!
Ohhhhhh Thank God, it's back
Oh God no, not again.
Wow lots of people falling over themselves for this one. Could not update to later versions of VS because of this? Really! I'm so glad I learnt WIX and was able to use the latest versions of Visual Studio before now. It has a bit of a learning curve but then powerful tools sometimes do. I think I will stick with it as well. It might take a bit more effort on my part but I get the payback of being able to get complete control over the install experience for my users which leads to happy customers and me not getting bugged by support as often.
Great news but a little late for us.
Some time ago we switched to Inno Setup with Visual & Installer extension (visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/5e57fe9a-ae5d-4740-a1c3-7a8e278e105b) and that was a good move.
We are totally satisfied with Inno Setup – it is simple but flexible and we have better control of our installers.
As we are developing in several VSs – from 2008 to 2013 – supporting only 2013 is not enough for us.
We will not convert everything back – especially now when we found a installation system which suits us better.
Funny to say this but by dropping support of vdproj moved us further and we made a huge improvement.
Anyway I am happy MS finally hears his customers. Now MS solve the troubles with main menu and UI theme ! 🙂
Well done. You listened to the (overwhelming) response from your user base and reinstated an important feature that, let's face it, should absolutely never have been dropped in the first place. But well done for putting it back.
Now the business I work for can ensure that all six developers can migrate our projects over to Visual Studio 2013 over the coming months, rather than stay stuck on VS 2010 indefinitely.
Ohh nooohs! I see so many people scaling up to team build doing crazy hacks again :S>
When will Wix finally be extended with a UI, that would allow us to finally kill off this wart.
Before everyone upgrades, realize there are still problems with this version. It's not version 1.0. It's 0.9. They're looking for feedback, and there are some problems that we've reported already. See visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/…/Discussions, for starters. They're close, but they're not quite there yet.
I am happy for this.
I have used Visual Installer ( http://www.samlogic.net/…/visual-installer.htm ) for a while now for my setups (and it is a nice tool) but I prefer to have a good setup solution accessible directly from Visual Studio.
Great! I got 1001 errors when I tried to install a Windows service with the InstallShield LE 2013 solution. Now I can use the classic setup projects again. I switch back to InstallShield when Windows services can be installed without errors.
We're glad that many of you are finding this extension useful and we're working on the issues that you have reported. If it is possible for you to create a small repro of the problem we would appreciate you submitting that via Connect (connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio) and attaching the solution to it.
Thanks,
Tony Goodhew, Program Manager, VS Pro
So you rip an important part out of your product and dont listen to the developers for two years, just to put the ripped out features into a buggy extension when everybody has already applied something like WiX and started enyoing the work with it?On top of that, you seem to pay some people to post these dumb "AWESOME! WOW! MORE OF IT!"-Comments ?
Don't know if to laugh or cry about this bs. I'm doing an internship in a company and establishing WiX as its new setup technology is my task. I like WiX and I can't see any point for going back to VS-Installer-Projects, so get lost.
Whatever happened to WiX? I used that with my TEO application back in the mid 2000's and it was a pain in the ass, but very powerful. Seems like MS should be investing in that project.
The level of installer ignorance is sad. 1001 Error messages don't come from InstallShield, they come from InstallUtilLib.dll which is a technology in the .NET framework that supports Visual Studio Installers. InstallShield gets the bad rap simply because they tried supported VSI technology. What's worse is that most times people use Installer Class custom actions is when they need to do things that MSI already handles except the tool they are using (VSI) doesn't expose the capability. Oh well…. I guess there's a reason I'm able to earn $200K a year doing installer work…. high quality is important to some organizations.
Thank you very much! All my Setup-projects from VS2010 is tested in VS2013 and it works even better!
It is the Prerequisite component for Crystal Reports Runtime(13_0_9) that is finally behaving as it should!
Very Good!
Simply FANTASTIC! I had a Windows Forms app that I installed on a 64 bit RDS server, and wanted to remain 64 bit. I was extremely disappointed to see that in order to target x64 with InstallShield, I would have had to spend $2400 minimum, just for that functionality. Needless to say, that was keeping me stuck with VS 2010. With this extension, I was able to migrate seamlessly to VS 2013.
THANK YOU!
Hi,
What is the future for Wix as installer tool in Visual Studio as supposed to InstallShield?
Cuong.
Hi Tony, If you'd like to also include a special edition of InstallAware, providing one-click App-V 4.x and 5.x targeting from Visual Studio solutions, please contact me. It would be InstallAware's pleasure to provide a more flexible commercial alternative to InstallShield LE, and inside the Visual Studio box nonetheless! Hoping this won't cause any InstallShield folks to come after you with pitchforks 😉
I am getting the following error:
Unable to open project
'C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0Common7IDECommonExtensionsMicrosoftVSIbinVsdProjectsSetup.vdproj'
why is that?
Great News.
(Who cares about localization. English is now the language of the world.)
The phrasing of this announcement almost makes me think that this is a temporary solution to both further the development of ISLE and give Visual Studio Installer users time to migrate their projects to the "in-box solution."
It's clear that this extension is brand-new, but is it still Microsoft's/Visual Studio Platform Team's position that ISLE will be the tool used to create installer projects, and this extension already has a planned obsolescence, perhaps with the next release of Visual Studio, or the release after? If I'm still going to have to convert my Visual Studio Installer projects to something else, I'd like to prepare for it now.
Christopher Painter wrote:
> Visual Studio Deployment Projects are horrible and should have never been brought back.
> Anyone who wants it back and thinks it's a good idea clearly doesn't know a damn thing
> about Windows Installer.
+1
I know this was popular on User Voice, but that doesn't make it right. Deployment Projects are GARBAGE.
Why do so many people want to use an objectively BAD TOOL?
I converted all of my service installers to InstallShield LE (ISLE) when our team upgraded to VS2012. I was surprised – at first I couldn't believe that Microsoft would just drop support like that, but I was pleased at how easy it was to create new installers using ISLE. Maybe I haven't had a need yet for more advanced installer scenarios, but this works for me. As long as ISLE is provided free, I think it is an acceptable solution. (Not commenting on the implementation, however.) I looked at WiX – too much for me to learn for such simple installer tasks.
The bigger issue, in my opinion, is determining what resources/technologies to invest my time in learning. This line of thinking makes me worry – what happens if Microsoft kills ASP.NET support? I know this is very highly unlikely, but Microsoft has a pattern of forcing their users into what they feel is optimal (or makes the most money). I see Microsoft as a business who is in the business of making money, not that they necessarily care about their customers.
呵呵,看来再也不用安装两套VS了,一套2010,一套2013。你真伟大。如果VS2012和2013开始就带有安装项目,微软的应用,要比现在好得多、多得多。是它,拖了后腿。以至于因为没有它,许多人至今仍然使用VS2010。VS
I just found out that a setup migrated to the new basic installer won't install on Windows XP. When I look in the MSI log I see this error message: DIRCA_CheckFX. Return value 3.
This has something to do with the .NET Framework check.
On newer versions than XP it will install without problems though. The original setup that was build in Visual Studio 2010 will install on XP just fine.
用VS2010建立的安装项目,用它重新打包后,不能在XP Service Pack 3上安装。
why my visual studio 2012 don't have setup and deployment?
We are migrating from VS 2010 and .Net 4.0 to VS 2013 and .Net 4.5.
We are developing x64 Windows Services.
Unfortunately Installshield LE don't support x64 and install x64 applications in Program Files (x86) and this solution installs x64 applications in proper Program Files but it crashes running Custom Action installing Windows Service. It crashes in both x86 and x64.
The error is "Error 1001. Error 1001. InstallUtilLib.dll: Unknown error."
Hi I have installed the plugin and noticed a problem deploying windows services. When I deploy it with visual studio 2013 I receive an error. But when deploying it with Visual studio 2010 it went well. Could anybody tell me what the problem is here?
Awesome, thank you !
When I build project in VS2010, everything is OK, but when build in VS2013 and run setup, get error: "Error 1001. InstallUtilLib.dll: Unknown error." I use Custom Actions. How to fix it?
excelent, Very good! Thank you very much!
F*ck U Microsoft! Xcode is far better than the awful Visual Studio. Apple F*ck Microsoft! F*ck U All!
I ran into a serious problem:
I created a new visual Studio Installer project in Visual Studio 2013.
On 64 bit machines installations were fine.
For 32 bit installs i set the Target Platform to x86. This installation still worked fine on 64 bit machines but failed on 32 bit – both in winxp and server 2003.
I get an error dialog with the message: "The installer was interrupted before could be installed. You need to restart the installer to try again."
In the installation log i found: "Note: 1: 2262 2: Error 3: -2147287038"
I tried opening and compiling the same solution with visual studio 2010. This time it worked.
The only difference i can think about is that vs 2013 setup project is using windows installer 4.5 (which i defined as a prerequisite) while vs 2010 is using installer 3.1.
Is it possible to use it with Visual Studio Express 2013 ?
I try to install it and I had the message:
''Microsoft Visual Studio is required, but it is not installed on this computer.
Please install it and retry''
Of course VS2013 is installed on my computer.
Thanks
Is this available for VS 2012 ?
i am getting a error 1001 installutillib.dll unknown error while installing the msi. Can you please let me know if this will be fixed in the next release and when would the next release be available ?.
Another wix advocate here. After switching to wix when we upgraded to vs2012 we haven't looked back.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'm assuming this is an update for the hobbyists, which is of course absolutely fine.
I'd have thought that the might of microsoft would have simply built a new spangly front end for wix for the majority of projects / initial scaffold and then would allow anyone that needed deeper to delve into the full wix loveliness. I assume this brings with it the same drawbacks and roadblocks that deployment projects had in the first place?
Hi all,
I just wanted to let you know that we have posted an update to the extension (v0.9.1.0) that addresses a number of customer issues, including:
-Error 1001 – InstallUtilLib.dll, custom installer actions failure
-Cases of an un-closable modal dialog appearing
-Builds causing the VS Repair dialog to appear
Please try this extension update and let us know if it doesn't address the above.
Thanks,
Tony Goodhew, Program Manager, VS Platform.
Version 0.9.1.0 hasn't fixed the multiple content files error 2727 problem I reported. 🙁
connect.microsoft.com/…/new-vs-installer-project-produces-error-2727-when-more-than-1-content-file-included
Is anyone looking into this one? I'm surprised no-one else has reported this as it affects every project I have.
Following my post here, MS have commented on my bug report:
"We understand the issue and will be including a fix in a future version of the extension."
I hope that means it'll be in this initial RTM release, and not some future release!
So this is not compatible with Visual Studio 2012?
@David – we will get the fix to your short-term in the final release of this extension. If the fix does not work for you, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me directly at unnir at Microsoft dot com.
Unni Ravindranathan
Program Manager, Visual Studio
Wow – Thanks for Listening MS!!!
I disagree with our assessment of ISLE and judging by the comments below so does almost every developer on the planet. ISLE is by far the worst installer option and the upgraded, read – paid for, version is cumbersome to use at best and impossible in most situations. InnoSetup, Nullsoft, Advanced, WIX, or just about any other installer is better. If you did a survey you would see that nobody is using ISLE. I don't know why you guys continue to associate with InstallShield. It damages your credibility. Any developer worth half his weight in salt knows ISLE is worthless and when you stand behind it we have to question Microsoft's judgement.
Thanks a lot.. that was much needed ..!!!! So happy to see this 🙂
Great solution for VS 2013, finally.
Now,
Any final and good solution for VS 2012 ?
The install shield limited edition that cannot install services.
The WIX Toolset, which, while powerful is exceeding user-unfriendly and has a steep learning curve. There is even a downloadable template for installing windows services.
arstechnica.com/…/viewtopic.php
can you tell me how i can make a setup file for windows form application?
i mean make setup file for forms?
There are grammatical errors in this article! What is RTM? A bit disappointed with the quality coming from Microsoft.
Version 0.9.1.0 is failing during installation for me.
The error message is: "The installer was interrupted before <program name> could be installed. You need to restart the installer to try again.". This error is seen as soon as our setup executable tries to launch the msi.
I get an error status 1603 in the Event Viewer.
UPDATE 6/12/2014: We have released the RTM version of this extension – v1.0.0.0. This release addresses:
• Warnings when building with Microsoft.bcl.async
• Error 2727 occuring with more than 1 content file
• Some cases of the 0x8000000A when using the command line
Unfortunately we couldn't address all cases of the command line issue for this release as we're still investigating the appropriate way to address them. What we do have is a workaround that we believe will work for almost all of them. If you are still suffering this issue then you can try to change the DWORD value for HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio12.0_ConfigMSBuildEnableOutOfProcBuild registry value to 0. If this doesn't exist you can create it as a DWORD.
Is there a way to install a redist package as part of one of these installers?
Hi,
This won't install for me, I click on "Install" and nothing happens at all. I have tried many downloads and many times. Even VSI_bundle.exe /q or similar won't work?
Cheers,
Rob
I have had the same problem as Yosi Maurer, while using version 1.0.0.0
The project installs fine on Windows 7 64Bit, but on XP it falls over and states: "The installer was interrupted before QuoteHistory could be installed. You need to restart the installer and try again."
This is a fairly big problem as our team has nearly all migrated to Visual Studio 2013 and nearly all of our users are still on XP (big legacy app issues :-)).
I'm having the same problem as Thomas Paul. With version 1.0.0 of the extension, my installer fails to run on Windows Server 2003. With verbose logging turned on, I see an eventual return value of 1603:
MSI (c) (58:CC) [13:31:04:915]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603
While nothing specifically shows up as an error in the log, this is the last section that is run before the installer tries (and fails) to display the FatalErrorForm:
Action 13:31:02: DIRCA_CheckFX.
Action start 13:31:02: DIRCA_CheckFX.
MSI (c) (58:CC) [13:31:02:493]: Note: 1: 2235 2: 3: ExtendedType 4: SELECT `Action`,`Type`,`Source`,`Target`, NULL, `ExtendedType` FROM `CustomAction` WHERE `Action` = 'DIRCA_CheckFX'
MSI (c) (58:CC) [13:31:02:587]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1) of type 790542 for thread 5836
MSI (c) (58:48) [13:31:02:587]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:DOCUME~1JJohnsonLOCALS~1Temp1MSI3.tmp, Entrypoint: CheckFX
MSI (c) (58:D0) [13:31:02:587]: Cloaking enabled.
MSI (c) (58:D0) [13:31:02:587]: Attempting to enable all disabled privileges before calling Install on Server
MSI (c) (58:D0) [13:31:02:587]: Connected to service for CA interface.
MSI (c) (58:48) [13:31:02:681]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1) of type 790542 for thread 5836
Action ended 13:31:02: DIRCA_CheckFX. Return value 3.
I wish I found out about this last week when I was building my new development box. I spent half a day installing Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and its service packs only to support legacy installer projects. This goes along way for rebuilding my lost trust in Microsoft due to all the bad calls being made from about 2011 onward. You guys just need to copy iOS's e-mail apps to 100 friends or co-workers model and I may even take Windows App development seriously.
Hi all,
I have also the same issue on Windows XP Machins for deployment : DIRCA_CheckFX error
Does it be planed to fix this issue quickly? I'm blocked !!!
Thanks
Maxime
Same troubles as a few others; installers created with 1.0.0.0 of the extension run fine on Windows 7 boxes, fail on XP with "The installer was interrupted before <program name> could be installed. You need to restart the installer to try again."
Unlike Thomas Paul, this isn't as big of an issue for me because my team still uses Visual Studio 2010; it's still an issue of course, because there's no way I can convince our manager to get VS 14 into next year's budget when the installer projects don't work.
Thank you for this. I was finally able to upgrade the Paint.NET project files from VS2010 with this.
I would also like to add that we are having issues with using the final installer packages on Windows XP. This is a major dealbreaker as we have many legacy customers stuck on XP.
Wow…It's Great news, Thanks a Lot 🙂
Although I primarily use WIX to create installers the Visual Studio Installer project is very useful for simple installers. I know a lot of folk are glad to see that Visual Studio Installer projects are back.
Hi Space!
For every one who needs the setup projects to run on Windows XP or Windows 2003, here are steps for a workaround which worked for me.
– Create a simple dummy setup in Visual Studio 2010 (you just need a VS 2010 .msi).
– Install the tool “MsiDB” from Microsoft or look if it is installed on your drive (search for “MsiDB.exe”). For me it was on C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SDKsWindowsv7.0ABin.
– Start the tool an select the Visual Studio 2010 .msi. Select an export folder.
– Select “Binary” in the tool, select “Export” and click “OK”. (Now new files are found in the previous selected export folder.)
– Close the tool!
– Create your Visual Studio 2013 setup project.
– Start “MsiDB” again and now select the VS 2013 .msi. Select an OTHER export folder.
– Select “Binary” in the tool, select “Export” and click “OK”.
– Now, this is the magic (!). Copy the file “MSVBDPCADLL.ibd” from the VS 2010 export folder to the VS 2013 export folder and overwrite the existing file.
– Now select “Import” in the tool a select “Binary.idt” and then hit “OK”. (There is no visual response after clicking OK so make sure you click it.)
– Close the tool with “Quit”.
– Now you should see, that the last edit date of the VS 2013 .msi changed. Your setup is now ready for WinXP / Win 2003.
I have tested it also on Win 2012 R2. It worked for me every time!
Hope this helps you to.
Cheers from beautiful Austria! – Xian
The solution proposed by Xian by using MSIDB tool from the SDK and override the MSVBDPCADLL.ibd file exported from VS2010's msi and then reimport back into VS2013's msi works well to me.
Thanks Xian.
Thanks, but to late.
We've already moved dozens of existing VS projects from integrated installer to WIX. A big investment not billable to any customer, because they don't care what tool we use to create setups. Tanks a lot, Microsoft.
We've learned our lessons for the future: You don't want us old fashioned LOB desktop application developers anymore as customers. We are not cool enough.
Thanks for this! Very Helpful!
Pleased to see that MS has listened to their customers.
I used the setup feature since the early Visual Studio days and sorely missed it in the the last releases of VS. This forced the use of Wix installer which I now consider, with its flexibility, to be superior to the original setup and have no intention to returning to MS setup.
Registry fix works, but why does it have to be under HKCU? Can it be applied to HKLM?
I'm receiving an error when I try to uninstall: Could not open key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE32SOFTWAREWow6432NodeMicrosoftEAPSIMMethods18FastReauthContext. Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.
I've tried uninstalling from within Visual Studio 2013 (right-clicking on the setup project and choosing 'uninstall') and by going through the Control Panel->Uninstall a program. I am running VS as an admin, and I click the 'allow' button when the UAC dialog opens when uninstalling from the control panel.
Any help will be appreciated. I'm currently on Windows 8.1 Pro.
Is there a planned fix for the MSVBDPCADLL.ibd problem with regards to installing on Windows XP and Server 2003? The solution provided by Xian works, but these installers should work on XP & 2003 without any extra intervention by the developer. I did attempt to switch to the Install Shield installer, but now I have run into problems with using Crystal Report merge modules and the fact it causes the installer to fail on server 2003 (still investigating that one). I would just like to go back to using the Visual Studio Installer instead.
VERY GOOD. I thought you were a [placeholder for your preferred insult], considering all the requests and your previous answer. However, now I have changed my opinion. Very well done, and please keep it all in all future releases!
I have a quicker workaround that using MsiDB.exe which has worked for me in getting around the DIRCA_CheckFx Error 3 issue when trying to install under Windows XP. ("The installer was interrupted before <program name> could be installed…")
All paths below are from a 64 bit system, adjust program files directory accordingly for 32-bit.
If you have an installation of VS2010, grab hold of the dcpa.dll file from
C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0Common7ToolsDeployment
Archive the one in
C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0Common7IDECommonExtensionsMicrosoftVSIbin
and replace it with the VS2010 one.
Bingo – installers which work under Win7 (64 bit tested) AND WinXP (tested on 32-bit SP3), straight from the VS2013 IDE.
Hopefully MS will release a patch for dcpa.dll under VS2013 so this hack isn't required. I worked it out via the instructions below, and finding out what DLL files went into MSVBDPCADLL.ibd (although the clue is in the title, I'd say).
Thanks for that post. I was having to cope with the Installer Shield but that has some issues with Crystal Reports redistributables. I am going to switch back to the Visual Studio Installer.
thank you very much !
Must be installed VS 2010 from which you can get the valid file "dpca.dll".
Close Visual Studio 2013
Copy file with replace dpca.dll from C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0Common7ToolsDeployment to C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0Common7IDECommonExtensionsMicrosoftVSIbin.
Open Project
Rebuild
Hello. I've encountered similar problem to Chris Witterholt. On Windows XP I can't run msi installer builded with Yours project. Installation process is terminated without any error message. Logs revealed info that both
DIRCA_CheckFX and VSDCA_VsdLaunchConditions exits with error code 3. Setting those conditions to 0 in InstallExecuteSequence and InstallUISequence fixes the bug, but installation process doesn't check for installed prequisites components.
Needed to build a quick installer to put a third party DLL in to the GAC.
Very easy. Built in minutes. Saved the Day
Can't create or load Installshield projects in Visual Studio
I get the following error message in Visual Studio when I try to use Installshield 2012 files:
somename..ism' cannot be opened because its project type (.ism) is not supported by ths version of the application.
To open it, please use a version that supports this type project .
We are using InstallShield 2012 Professional and Visual Studio 2010
From everything we have read there is not a fix we can build with InstallaShield outside of Visual Studio which is not our ideal method>
Updating either software to a later version is not an option
Nice extestion. But i am waiting for solving problem with DIRCA_CheckFX and VSDCA_VsdLaunchConditions, because installer do not work on win2k3.
You have been redeemed! – A multinational corporation that listens to developers – now that's a good trick.
I have to ask, since most people seem to want it back, can we not just dispose of that ridiculous process in 2012 and go back to what has been tried and tested for years? I don't understand why you would take a process that works great and kill it in favor of a nightmare bug-fest? Our department has been trying for 6 months to get a 2012 deployment to work and it is stupid complex vs what we did with installers in 10 minutes with 2010?!? Truth be told, I voted against upgrading to 2012, but was voted down by the "oooh, shiny!" people.
This really should be made available for Studio 2012 or has support completely ended for that product already?
This doesn't seem to be recognizing the VS 2013 Desktop Express version. Is this extension not available for the Express version of VS?
@sean
you better go with Wix tool set wix.codeplex.com/…/136891
Hi I'm trying to install the Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension but it gives the following message: "Microsoft visual studio is required, but it is not installed on this computer" And i have installed Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2012. Can you tell me the solution for this problem? Thanks
Well Done! I have been waiting for a long time。。。
I will try it right now。。
This is awesome, thanks for listening to the users. Worked well first time I installed it with VS 2013 CE and opening up a large (former VS 2010) solution.
@Nuno Alexandre Costa I think you need Visual Studio 2013 for this – its not compatible with 2012. You can install the pro version for free now – just search for "Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition".
Never got around to upgrading from VS2010, and here comes VS2013 Community with the Installer projects back (never knew they left!). That's awesome payoff for severe procrastination!
Nach drei Stunden Suche die erste Seite, auf der es tatsächlich auch einen Link zum Download gibt …
How to create for the Custom Installer using framework 4.5 and visual studio 2013
Regarding MSI failing on XP… I got it to work, with 2 changes:
1) The VSDFrameworkVersion property value was "V3.5" instead of something like 2.0.50727
2) dpca.dll… as per one of the other comments, I needed to replace the VS2013 DLL with a copy from VS2008
Once BOTH of these were fixed, the MSI worked on XP. (I haven't tested to see if they break Win7).
FYI, to fix the VSDFrameworkVersion I added a PostBuildEvent to run the following script:
Dim installer, database, view, result
Set installer = CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
Set database = installer.OpenDatabase ("abc.MSI", 1)
Set view = database.OpenView ("UPDATE Property SET Value='2.0.50727' WHERE Property='VSDFrameworkVersion'")
view.Execute
database.Commit
Set database = nothing
As Jaroslaw mentions above…
An alternative is to leave the 2013 dpca.dll alone, and use the following PostBuildEvent script to disable .NET framework checks:
Dim installer, database, view, result
Set installer = CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
Set database = installer.OpenDatabase ("OtapGenerator.msi", 1)
Set view = database.OpenView ("UPDATE InstallExecuteSequence SET Sequence=0 WHERE Action='DIRCA_CheckFX'")
view.Execute
Set view = database.OpenView ("UPDATE InstallExecuteSequence SET Sequence=0 WHERE Action='VSDCA_VsdLaunchConditions'")
view.Execute
Set view = database.OpenView ("UPDATE InstallUISequence SET Sequence=0 WHERE Action='DIRCA_CheckFX'")
view.Execute
Set view = database.OpenView ("UPDATE InstallUISequence SET Sequence=0 WHERE Action='VSDCA_VsdLaunchConditions'")
view.Execute
Set view = database.OpenView ("UPDATE Property SET Value='2.0.50727' WHERE Property='VSDFrameworkVersion'")
view.Execute
database.Commit
Set database = nothing
The extension doesn't work any more after I upgraded to VS 2013.4.
Does this support installing a Windows Service?
Will the workaround work if HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE is used used instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER?
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio12.0_ConfigMSBuildEnableOutOfProcBuild
I cannot see the extension [1] as it is in Chinese/Japanese characters. I also have the question, can we use this for installing services, eg with MSMQ prerequisites like the 2012 Wix sample [2]? Finally, I too have installed the update to VS2013 so if it is not supported any more then Wix I guess is the way to go.
thank you!
1.[] ; X.Non english pages, including ; – Microsoft Community ;; answers.microsoft.com/…/4a6fd0de-6d33-458a-94e9-80ee8ea22e64
2.[] ; X.WiX Template for Installing a Windows Service | Chris Schiffhauer ;; http://www.schiffhauer.com/wix-template-for-installing-a-windows-service