Pre-requesites - Folder path problems

[Toejam765]

Hi all,

A few days ago I encountered a problem with my installers and I can't figure out what to do and I have finally decided to admit defeat and ask for help, and this seems like the best place to start.

The installers in question are designed to install 5 pre-requesits (Adobe Reader 9, SQL Native Client, .Net Framework, VS2010 Redist, and Crystal Reports - in that order). Up until a few months ago the pre-requesite installers were run from folders and sub-folders within the main installer folder. (That made a lot more sense in my head... basically the CD looked a little like this MyCD\MyInstallerFolder\Pre-requesites\Adobe; MyCD\MyInstallerFolder\Pre-requesites\SQL;... etc)

A few months ago it was decided that the pre-requesites should be placed in a different location on the CD (justification being that there are a few copies of some of them (Namely the .Net Framework) which has caused the CD to grow out of control, so we finally did some cleaning up and had the pre-requisites in a sepearate folder so that everything could access them)

The new location was "MyCD\MyExternals\" and in Advananced Installer the folder location for the pre-requesites was set to "..\MyExternals\".

So... a few months pass without any problems, the pre-requesites all work fine, everyone is happy... Until a few days ago, when the QA team start testing again. Everytime they test they run the installers and usually don't experience any problems, but that day they experienced an error whilst trying to install the pre-requesites.

"This installation package could not be opened. Verify that the package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a calid Windows Installer package."

So I set about fixing the problem for them, and after an hour or so realised that it was due to the change in location. (It was a slow day. ) specifically the addition of "..\NewLocation".

Has anyone else ever experienced a problem with using "..\" to locate pre-requesites? I am certain that it is because of this file path as changing it back to the old one works fine, but then when I try again with the new path it doesn't (I have also tried various different paths with ".." to go up a folder at different stages and none of them work on this machine)

The part that I am most confused about by all of this, is that we have gone a good couple of months without this causing any problems on other machines/operating systems/environments (every time the QA team install again they do so on a fresh machine so there isn't any chance that we just hadn't experienced it before because the pre-requesites weren't installed, this is how they always install the pre-requesites) and probably more worrying is the fact that Adobe Reader installs fine.

I have tested multiple times and tried many different things but I can't get it to work using the new location. Normally I would have moved on from this by now, it's quite a small problem for this installer, but having spent so much time on it, added to the fact that we built the new CD structure around this location for the pre-requisites, I just can't forget about it.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I originally put the incorrect ordering down and forgot to mention what might be usefull information: The two pre-requesites that fail are SQL and Crystal (Acrobat worked fine straight away, then in order to test I installed SQL manually (running the installer that should run from my installer), then ran it again, and it failed at Crystal (I checked the others in between and they had installed correctly)) and both of these are .msi files, the others (that work) are all .exe.

[mihai.petcu]

Hello and welcome to Advanced Installer forums,

The Folder field in the Setup File group from the prerequisite properties tab would have relevant functionality in your exact case. Here is the user guide article( Setup File -> Folder section ) that explains its usage.

All the best,
Mihai

[Toejam765]

Hi Mihai,

Thank you for your responce,

At the moment the folder field is where we have the location that the installers can be found at (see attached Crystal-Prerequesite.png) and this seems to work for all other machines that we have tested the installers on and even on this machine it works fine if the installers are .exe, it's just the .msi ones that aren't working. I'll admit, when I first read the help I was a little confused to start with so chances are I have done something wrong there, but I can't figure out what it is.

Thanks,
Dominic

[mihai.petcu]

Hi Dominic,

The correct format for the Folder field is described in this user guide article( Setup File group -> Folder section ).
Can you please try to use that format and see the outcome?

All the best,
Mihai

[Toejam765]

Hi Mihai,

Sorry for the long delay in my reply, I was a little snowed at work the day you last replied as it was my last day before I went on holiday.

Before I left I tested what the user guide suggested for the folder field and was greeted with an error :

error.
Exception - Could not copy file from 'C:\MySoftware\v2.54\3rd Party\Crystal Reports\CRRedist2008_x86.msi' to 'C:\MySoftware\v2.54\MSIInstallers\..\CDExternals\CrystalReports\?\CRRedist2008_x86.msi'. Error: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.

Build finished because an error was encountered.

Again, I have tried various different formats (I have also tried to copy the exact example in the user guide to see if that works) but I couldn't avoid the error, every time I try it tries to use the "?" in the path. (Part of me isn't sure that I really want to know how stupid I am being with this, I get the feeling I am missing something obvious).

Also, if my underlieing problem is that the format I am using for folder field is incorrect, do you know why only pre-requisites that use .msi installers fail and only on some machine and not others, it seems a little bit wierd.

Thanks and sorry again for the late reply,

[Cosmin]

Hi,

Are you using relative paths? It looks like the build process tries to use an incorrect path.

The path in your screenshot is correct and it should work. If the problem persists, please send us the .AIP (project) file you are using to support at advancedinstaller dot com so we can investigate it.

Regards,
Cosmin