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FilesInUse Dialog help

When uninstalling my product (a Microsoft Word Add-In) whilst Word is open, I get a dialog saying 'The following applications should be closed before continuing the install:'. I was trying to investigate how I could display the same dialog when my product is being installed. I have been looking at my msi file in Orca and have found the dialog FilesInUse. However, when previewing this dialog in Orca it does not look or have the same text as the dialog I am receiving. I have tried changing the caption of this dialog, saving the msi file and then installing and uninstalling my product. The dialog still shows but not with my edited caption. I then uninstalled my product with logging and the logging suggests that the FilesInUse dialog is being shown but it is not the same as the one I am seeing in Orca. Is this the same dialog or not?

IT_Graduate Thursday, August 13, 2009 11:09 AM

Windows has its own version of this dialog that it will show in some circumstances, one of which is that the dialog in the MSI file doesn't have the right controls.

Visual Studio doesn't natively support you doing this because you don't get to say exactly where in the install your custom actions will run (install custom actions all run at the end of the install after all the files are installed). The general answer is that you run a custom action that calls MsiProcessMessage with an INSTALLMESSAGE_FILESINUSE record.

Visual Studio setup aren't fully-featured, that's all, they don't offer IDE support to all the features of Windows Installer.

Phil Wilson