An MSI file is a standard format, so whether it was built by InstallShield or not should be mostly irrelevant.

But.....there's nothing to dothis in VS setup projects. The closest you could get is to ise the Dark tool from WiX which reverse engineers an MSI file into WiX source.
However, you're likely to have a bunch of problems for which I know of no solution:

1) InstallShield has more functionality than VS setup projects. If that setup is organised into features, has custom dialogs, immediate custom actions, deferred custom actions that are required to be in a specific point in the install, any custom actions at all in the UI sequencethen VS does none of these things. That's not a complete list, just what I think may be the most common.

2) If there are custom actions, then how can you rebuild the setup without the source? There might be InstallScript custom actions (their proprietary scripting language) as well as more normal custom actions in C++, VBScript etc.

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Phil Wilson

An MSI file is a standard format, so whether it was built by InstallShield or not should be mostly irrelevant.

But.....there's nothing to dothis in VS setup projects. The closest you could get is to ise the Dark tool from WiX which reverse engineers an MSI file into WiX source.
However, you're likely to have a bunch of problems for which I know of no solution:

1) InstallShield has more functionality than VS setup projects. If that setup is organised into features, has custom dialogs, immediate custom actions, deferred custom actions that are required to be in a specific point in the install, any custom actions at all in the UI sequencethen VS does none of these things. That's not a complete list, just what I think may be the most common.

2) If there are custom actions, then how can you rebuild the setup without the source? There might be InstallScript custom actions (their proprietary scripting language) as well as more normal custom actions in C++, VBScript etc.

---

Phil Wilson

It also depends on whether you just want to "decompose" the MSI package built with InstallShield into something that you can build using another tool or if you want to be able to change the install logic once the MSI has been decomposed.

InstallShield can generate two "types" of MSI projects - "basic MSI" and "InstallScript MSI". The former should have just about everything you need to change the install logic once you deconstruct the MSI package as most of the install logic will be in the MSI table records. The latter won't, since most of the install logic is embedded in one or more compiled libraries contained in the MSI package. IOW, you could pull the compiled libraries out of the InstallShield generated MSI package and use another tool to pack them into a new MSI package, but you wouldn't be able to change the logic within the libraries themselves without the original InstallShield source files.

How do I tell which type of MSI project I have. The files name is "ISScript1050.Msi". All we have is the setup disk and our application code. All the setup and install files went belly up with the company that did the work. If "ISScript1050.Msi" is a InstallScript MIS is it possible to turn it into a VB setup and deplay project? This is my first setup and deplay project so if there is a better source for this information please let me know.
Thanks