Powershell transcript TXT files appear at install time

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Dear Advanced Installer Support Team,

Few customers of ours started to complain that lot of TXT files appear in their Documents folder while they´re upgrading our product. All the files names look like this or similar:
PowerShell_transcript.VIE1QACL83.00mf6PwZ.20180123120208.txt

The pattern is that 3 files appear while installing our product, 1 right after they click on our EXE and the other 2 during install time. Furthermore some other TXTs might appear when uninstalling our product. You can imagine how many "dummy" files appeared in the folder already.

Advanced Installer version we use: 14.5.1
OSs the customers use: windows 10, server 2008, server 2012

I have a feeling your "Run Powershell inline script" type of custom actions are creating those TXT files, we have 4-5 custom actions with that type.

Questions:
1. Is it possible to prevent those files from being created?
2. If not, then it´d be good to define a different location where those file can go. Customers are unhappy about having those files in their Documents folder.

Thanks in adavance!

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Eusebiu]

Hi Zsolt,

We are not aware of such files created by our PowerShell custom action. Can you tell me what those files contain? Do they appear on all the machines?

I found that they are created if some specific PowerShell feature is used in the code. You can see this in the "Create a Transcript of What You Do in Windows PowerShell" article.

Do you use this feature in your custom actions?

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Hi Eusebiu,

Thanks for the quick answer and for the link you sent me, it was helping me to modify our inline PowerShell scripts in a way that transcript files go to a different location now.

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Eusebiu]

You're always welcome Zsolt. I'm glad I could help.

Best regards,
Eusebiu