If memory serves, I think that Windows will ask for the original install media if the cached MSI is missing. That should be testable. I don't think there's anything that can be done in the MSI file to help, so I woouldn't worry about different authoring approaches.
Patches are more problematical. If there is an installed product that was then patched, the base MSI can be provided, but since the installed product consists of MSI+patches, the actual installed product can't be rebuilt. It may ask for the patch in that situation. It looks like you have some testing to do. --------------- Phil Wilson On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 8:23 AM, Walter Dexter <wfdex...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, all. > > I know you're going to just shake your head at this, but here it is. > > I create installers for one of many products that install onto a group of > roughly 14,000 systems at my employer. Some of these systems have drives > that are small by modern standards, and thanks to a weird partitioning > scheme, the drive with the Windows directory is seldom more than 30 - 40 GB. > > I've just found out that, in order to get enough drive space to keep > running, our support team sometimes deletes the contents of the > windows\installer directory - the Windows Installer Cache. > > In a bit of reading on the Microsoft site - > https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2667628 - this is something of a > fatal injury for the Windows Installer in terms of uninstall or repair of > already installed packages. > > Despite that, nobody is going to reinstall Windows on these devices - > they're scattered around the country connected to slow DSL lines for the > most part, and nobody local is willing or able to do that. > > I don't really care about the bigger problem, but I'm wondering if anyone > has any "thoughts about authoring packages that might have to install into > that mess, or might have to be used to upgrade an already installed package > whose cache contents got deleted. (Different ProductCode, same UpgradeCode.) > > Thanks, > > Walt > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
