HELP - Installation Project: Reinstallation Problem

[Rob Brown]

I put together an installation program and it works great the first time.
The problem I have is that we want the users to be able to rerun the
installation without needing to uninstall the older package first. How can
I set up the package to overlay the existing installation without forcing
the
user to run an uninstall first?

Thanks,
Rob Brown

P.S. If this is not the proper forum to post this question, please direct me
to the correct one.

 

[Rob Brown]

Nevermind. I was finally able to locate the information I needed here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/msi/setup/applying_major_upgrades_by_installing

 

[Steve]

With a .net installation, there are no registry updates.
So, all you should need to do is overwrite the existing
files in the project - to the single directory where they
are installed. So, you shouldn't need to deinstall.

The process should just be to get the user out of the
application to clear all locks, and then run the
installation program.

Or, am I missing something?

Steve.

 

[Rob Brown]

In the .Net IDE, when you click the Setup Project in the Solution Explorer,
the Properties window contains ProductCode, ProductName and UpgradeCode.
This information gets stored on the client's workstation. You can see the
ProductName from the Add/Remove Programs window. If you try to reinstall,
apparently msiexec checks the code values, determines that a previous
version exists and throws an error that you must first uninstall the
previous version. The link below solved the problem for me:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/msi/setup/applying_major_upgrades_by_installing