Hi All,

New to these forumsso please forgive any break in etiquette.

I have created a Setup & Deployment project using Visual Studio 2005 to allow me to distribute my application for use by other colleagues within my organisation.

As part of the installation, I want to run another executable and I configurethisusing the'Custom Actions' method of calling the executableduring the 'Commit' process.

However, when I run the installation package I get the following error:

"Another installation is already in progress. Complete that installation before proceeding with this install"

The executable I am calling is indeed another installation package but surely there is a way around this i.e. you would think that a single 'master' installation package would be capable of running other sub-installations ?

Has anyone out there got any ideas about getting around this ?

Thanks in advance,

Scott

Hi,

I have also the same problem as you have and I'm mearly replying to your question in hope that someone would see that you are not the only one. I've done the exact same things and my app is so that it requires the MS Access runtime to work and I'm trying to install it in the Commit phase. I've even tried to put the /quiet or /passive arguments to the runtime executable but with no luck... =(

Please, some when, tell us a way to work around this. If I could only somehow trigger the msacessruntime.exe after I click OK after a successful installation of my own application.

You can't run an MSI based install from a Visual Studio custom action. MSI doesn't permit that kind of recursive install (because it's a transaction, and because it tries to use system restore points per install etc). That's part of the reason why other prerequisites are installed by the setup.exe program. The bootstrap manifest generator can be used to generate custom prerequisites (first topic in this forum).

---

Phil Wilson

You could try to add the second project that you want to install to the solution (without the msi extras - just the Visual Studioproject itself) then add an Installer class to that project. Then add the project output to the setup/deployment project, which should be able to install as many different projects at one time as you want.

good luck!

Patrick

Hi,

I'm having mainly the same problem, I already use prerequisites in my installers, my problem is that I have no clue how to uninstall them when my application gets uninstalled. I'd like my installer to remove all it's prerequisites when it gets uninstalled. Is there a way to do that? As the other people that posted, first thing that came in mind was to use uninstall custom action for uninstalling the prerequisites, and faced the same problem with multiple installs/uninstalls not allowed.

Saw something like "deferred custom actions" which execute after the install/uninstall gets done completely( the msiexec process should be closed by that time and the third party install/uninstall should work when called from the deferred custom action). Is that correct? Does VS2005 setup projects allow that?


Thank you,

Horatiu

Depends what the prerequisites are. People don't remove prerequisites that might be shared, such as the VC++ runtime, .NET runtime, SQL Express etc for the simple reason that a client may install any number of products that need these and you don't want to break these by uninstalling something like the .NET FW.

---

Phil Wilson

It is a custom prerequisite made by me and integrated in VS2005 (added all required stuff in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages so that VS would recognize it) which is strictly used by my application. That's why I need to remove it when my applications gets uninstalled.


As I saw, the uninstall part from InstallExecuteSequence when viewing the msi DataBase with Orca goes from sequence no. 1 to sequence no 3600. I tried to move my uninstall custom action :" _[GUID].uninstall " (which had the sequence no. 1699) to sequence 3601 (after the files and folders are deleted in the uninstall process, at the very end of the uninstall-hoping that the msiexec /x process (which should uninstall my prerequisite) the custom action starts- will start after my app finishes uninstalling). At first, kindof logically, my cusomactions.dll file got delete in the "RemoveFiles" sequence so I got an error, then I made my customactions.dll as "Permanent" (not removed at uninstall) and... nothing happened, the cusom action did not attempt to execute at all. I may be on the wrong track here, I wonder if there is some XML code which can be added in Product.xml ( from the prerequisite) which tells the prerequisite to be removed with the app?


Thank you in advance,

Horatiu

Apologies for the numerous posts, I have one last question: Would it be possible to somehow pause/sleep the uninstall until my custom actions gets executed( uninstalls the prerequisite) and then resume the uninstall of my application?

To syntetise the ways I thought to make my prerequisite uninstall :

1. By modifying the uninstall custom action's sequence with Orca
2. By pausing the application uninstall until the prerequisite get uninstalled (is that possible?)
3. By adding some XML code in Product.xml which tells the prerequisite to uninstall when the app gets uninstalled (I doubt that's possible though, since prerequisites aren't related strictly to an application, but they are rather for general use)


Thank you,

Horatiu