philipnet

I write this with slight trepidation in my hands  .

My current employer is changing their M.I.S. software and so to improve and increase my repackaging skills I offered to repackage the new software - which would ordinarily take over half an hour per PC to install and involved visiting multiple sites.

Except that I’ve been hit by a couple of gotchas.

Firstly there is a 3rd party piece of software that is part of the M.I.S. software and that’s staying. For it to function with the new software, a DLL has to be copied onto the target machine and registered. Unfortunately, any subsequent attempt to run the old M.I.S. software will ask for the old software to be re-installed (it’s an MSI) from the CD ROM drive under the privileges of the user. However the CD is no longer in the drive and the user doesn’t have the rights to re-install it!

The answer: Simple, create another packing in SMS which copies the DLL, registers it and then uninstalls the old M.I.S. software.

Secondly some of the software was installed off of a mapped network drive, the drive letter of which (I:) isn’t mapped to anything for ordinary users. Unfortunately when trying to install, the MSI won’t install if that drive letter doesn’t exist (thankfully it doesn’t try to access any of the files on it).

The answer: Use the Editor in AdminStudio to change all references to the I: drive. (in Additional Tools —> Direct Editor , I changed it to the C: drive).

Even better is the fact that that the Windows Installer product code doesn’t change and the existing Transforms file still works!