What is causing a resource to be deleted

[Mike]

Hi,
Recently I got an answer as to how to fix a problem
relating to the cause of On-demand installations. It was
because the application was looking for a resource that
did not exist, which turned out to be a folder. This
provided a workaround to the problem i.e. create the
folder in the directory so that the path exists. But I
cant find out why this resource was deleted or why it no
longer exists. Please help I'm looking for answers to the
following:

1. How could the resource be deleted (as it is definately
not done by the user) ?

2. Why would this affect unrelated applications, i.e.
other unrelated applications seem to start this on-demand
install even though they should not need the resource that
is missing.

regards,
Mike.

 

[Carolyn Napier [MSFT]]

1.) Can't say for sure. If the folder is empty, the Installer could delete it if
an installation was authored to do so (RemoveFile table entry) or the folder was
created by the Installer (i.e. under it's management), it will delete a
non-empty folder. You could try using a tool like filemon.exe that is available
from http://www.sysinternals.com to try and monitor for the process that ends up
deleting the folder.

2.) One possibility is that the applications share COM registration and/or the
application makes a CoCreateInstance call to some CLSID that makes use of the
Installer resiliency functionality.

Hope this helps,
- Carolyn Napier
Microsoft Windows Installer Team

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