Strange registry keys being added to installation

[jezcooke]

I'm using Advanced Installer 11.4.1 Professional , today I tried to build a project that I haven't built for a while (I'm not 100% sure what version I was using when it last worked, but it may have been 10.6).

When building the setup I get numerous dialogs stating "Please wait while windows configures Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013...", it seems to be once per language per architecture, I can cancel it to save some time. The build does then complete. This is annoying but I mention it mostly in case it is related to the main problem.

When the build starts three empty registry trees are added to the installer (one of which is invalid) that cause the resultant setup to fail, the registry keys it creates are

SoftwareMicrosoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PerHwIdStorage
System\ControlSet001\Control\DeviceClasses
System\ControlSet001\Control\CoDeviceInstallers

(that's not a typo on the first one there is no backslash between Software & Microsoft).

I deleted the erroneous keys but the second I hit "build" they are immediately created again.

I tried to re-download 11.4 but it seems to be missing from the list of previous versions on your website (and other projects are using at least this version so I don't want to roll back further/try random old versions to see if I can get it to work).

Please can you help? I can send the AIP file if required.

[mihai.petcu]

Hello,

Are you using continuous integration tool / building the setup with ANT or something similar? If so, please check the script to make sure it doesn't add those registry entries.

Otherwise, if you're using the extension to build the installer from Visual Studio, please send us the resources so we can replicate this behavior. (.AIPROJ, dependencies, etc.)

You can get older versions of Advanced Installer from your customer information web-page. There's a combo box on the bottom of the screen after you enter the license key.

All the best,
Mihai

[jezcooke]

Hi,

I'm not using a continuous integration tool or ANT nor running from inside Visual Studio.

However I think I have solved the problem now, when opening or building the project I get a UAC pop-up asking permission for ComExtractor.exe to run, if I deny it access the spurious registry keys weren't added.

I looked at the file (an OCX) that it was trying to extract COM information from in the project and found that it had indeed somehow been set to register the OCX (all COM components in this project are manually registered in the registry section of the installer as we had lots of problems with either extracting COM information or auto-registration in the past - I forget the details now but doing it manually solved everything). I'm not sure how this had become turned on as this setup has been built many times in the past (I tried backup copies too which exhibited the same behaviour), nor do I know where it got that erroneous key path from.

Anyway after turning off "Extract registration from Native Library" on the offending file it appears to work again (it also seems to have gotten rid of the "configuring Visual Studio" dialog so I guess it was indeed related).

You can get older versions of Advanced Installer from your customer information web-page. There's a combo box on the bottom of the screen after you enter the license key.

I know but 11.4 is missing from the list, it goes from 11.3 to 11.4.1.

[mihai.petcu]

I'm glad you got to the bottom of this. Yes, it seems only the point releases are available for download because they are the most stable version.
If you really need 11.4 I can send you the kit over e-mail. Just contact me to support at advancedinstaller dot com and let me know.

All the best,
Mihai

[jezcooke]

If you really need 11.4 I can send you the kit over e-mail. Just contact me to support at advancedinstaller dot com and let me know.

Thanks, shouldn't need now that it seems to be working with 11.4.1.

[CJJ]

FYI, this is not a new problem to version 11.4.1.

I have been experiencing this problem with version 11.2 and 11.3 (perhaps earlier, as these are the only versions I have used).

The very same registry keys were added to my installation if I extracted COM information from one of our DLLs. Once I turned off COM extraction, the keys were no longer added.

Note that when I investigated using a third party tool to determine what registry keys should be added by our dll, these keys were not identified.

The especially nasty side effect that prompted me to investigate these installations was corruption of the Winsock on the target machines.
Note that if I used system restore to roll back the affected target systems to the point immediately prior to the install, the systems would return to normal operation.

Once I disabled the the COM extraction in the Advanced installer project, rebuilt the installers, and re-installed on the same (repaired) targets, the installations operated as expected (no odd registry keys, and no Winsock corruption).

So I have to point to an odd issue with the COM extraction utility.

[Daniel]

Hello and welcome to Advanced Installer forums,

Thank you for your interest in Advanced Installer.

In order to be able to investigate this issue further it would be very useful if you could send us to support at advancedinstaller dot com a DLL file (or a download link for it) which replicates this behavior when the "Auto register file (DLL,OCX,etc)" is enabled.

All the best,
Daniel

[Daniel]

Hello,

An improvement regarding Invalid registry key extracted by Advanced Installer when using the "Extract registration info from native library" option was added in version 11.7 of Advanced Installer released on December 16th, 2014.

All the best,
Daniel