Where did the "please wait..." message in setup.exe go?

[MikeMio]

I have an installer which consists of a setup.exe and an msi file both of
which are located on a web server.

When running the setup.exe there used to be a “please wait...” message box
that appeared while downloading the msi file from the server. Now, there is
no longer a message box. The setup program just disappears until the msi is
downloaded. This can take some time depending on the user’s connection and we
have been having people think that it is not working.

The only thing (that I am aware of) that has changed is that the original
setup was created with Visual Studio 6 and it is now created with Visual
Studio 2005. There doesn’t appear to be an option for enabling/disabling the
message.

Any ideas why it might be happening and/or how to fix it?

Thanks.

[Jie Wang [MSFT]]

Hi Mike,

Is this setup.exe written by yourselves or generated by a setup authoring
tool?

And when you say "it is now created with Visual Studio 2005", do you mean
you're working with the "Setup Project" (the project type) in Visual Studio
2005, or it is something else like a C++ project for the bootstrapper only?

Could you please elaborate?

Thanks,
Jie Wang

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[MikeMio]

Hi Jie,

Both installations, including the setup.exe's, were generated by Visual
Studio using the "Setup And Deployment" project type. The first was generated
with VS6 and the second with VS2005.

Thanks for you help with this.

Mike

[mayayana]

If you mean VS6 Package and Deployment Wizard,
that uses a setup.exe file that is specific to the PDW.
It's a bootstrapper than then runs setup1.exe, which
coontains the main install. The Please wait... message
is built into setup.exe.

VS 2005 is .Net. VS6 is not. They're using different
programming languages and share very little other
thatn the name "Visual Studio".

The setup.exe was required by the VS6 PDW install
design. There's no setup.exe required by an MSI, and
personally I would stop any install that tries to download
files remotely. I don't know exactly what you're trying to
do, but are you sure you need the setup.exe? Why not
just link to the MSI?

[MikeMio]

Hmmm... Looks like I was wrong about the first setup.exe being created with
VC6. I apologzie. The app itself (the one being installed) was created with
VS6 but it appears that the first setup.exe must have been created with
VS2003.

In any case, the first setup.exe's verion is 5.2.3668.0 and the file
description is "Windows Installer Internet Download Bootstrap".

The second setup.exe's version is 8.0.50727.42. The file description on that
one is just "Setup".

I agree using the .msi file alone is preferable but the setup.exe is there
for people with older system that do not yet have Windows Installer 2.0.
While the number of people in this group is small, they do still exist.

Mike

[mayayana]

> Hmmm... Looks like I was wrong about the first setup.exe being created
with
> VC6. I apologzie. The app itself (the one being installed) was created
with
> VS6 but it appears that the first setup.exe must have been created with
> VS2003.
>
> In any case, the first setup.exe's verion is 5.2.3668.0 and the file
> description is "Windows Installer Internet Download Bootstrap".
>

There is a "Visual Studio Installer" package "backported"
to VS6. Maybe that's what you have. I have it installed but I've
never tried using it. I'm not really familiar with .Net but my
impression is that they have their own MSI setup program, so
it wouldn't be surprising if the two setup programs produce
quite different things -- despite both being Windows Installer
setups.

[Wilson, Phil]

That sounds like the one specifically designed to download MSI files from an
internet location:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888473

using msistuff etc.

--
Phil Wilson
The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590592972

"MikeMio" <Mik...@newsgroups.nospam> wrote in message
news:FA6B2641-6D96-4866...@microsoft.com...

[Jeff Henkels]

That makes sense -- source for that version of setup.exe & msistuff.exe were
part of the Platform SDK at one time. I've used them on several occasions
for my setup projects.

"Wilson, Phil" <ph...@wonderware.nospam.com> wrote in message
news:EBD96F7D-8634-4C7D...@microsoft.com...

[MikeMio]

Yes, I would guess that is the same setup.exe that visual studio uses. I
don't think .net comes into - at least I am not use .net for anything.

Still my question is what happened to the "please wait..." message box? I am
thinking that it must be something that I can re-activeate because it seems
hard to believe it would be removed. Without it there is nothing on the
screen for a long time while the msi is downloaded.

I have looked in VS2005 project properties and the MSIStuff.exe for options
but I don't see anything. I will try to track down the source code that Phil
mentioned but if it is just a switch or something simple perhaps someone here
has run into it before.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Mike

[Jie Wang [MSFT]]

Hello Mike,

Can you just send me (jiewan at msft) the setup.exe file (just that one
file and you'll probably need to rename and compress it to avoid antivirus
software killing it) so I can take a look and make sure what exactly it is?

Since I still don't know what it's made of (Visual Studio 2005 Setup
Project bootstrapper or MSIStuff or something else), it's hard to tell what
went wrong.

[MikeMio]

Ok, I have sent it.

Thanks,
Mike

""Jie Wang [MSFT]"" wrote:
> Can you just send me (jiewan at msft) the setup.exe file ...

[Wilson, Phil]

No it's not the same setup.exe, that's the point.

--
Phil Wilson
The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590592972

"MikeMio" <Mik...@newsgroups.nospam> wrote in message

news:634E0EDF-AC50-474C...@microsoft.com...

[Jie Wang [MSFT]]

Hi all,

Let me update the issue.

Mike sent me the two bootstrappers. I found the one which doesn't show the
download progress dialog is generated by Visual Studio 2005 Setup Project.

Then I found there was a bug found in the Visual Studio 2008 Setup Project
which caused the download progress dialog issue. That bug was fixed in
Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Although I didn't found a record indicating the
same bug exists in version 2005, I suspect it does.

So I sent Mike the 2008 SP1 version of the bootstrapper header (setup.bin)
and asked him to follow the instructions below:

1. Open your Visual Studio 2005 installation folder (for example C:\Program
Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8), and locate the following subfolder:
SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Engine.

2. You shall find the setup.bin file in that folder. Rename it to
setup.bin.bak for backup purpose.

3. Copy the new setup.bin file (2008 SP1 version) to that folder.

4. Rebuild your setup project in Visual Studio 2005.

5. Test the new setup.exe and see if you have the progress dialog.

After doing the steps above, Mike told me that the download progress dialog
is back again. The UI looks different than his original version but that's
just the new UI design and doesn't affect the functionality.

The bug is also mentioned on Aaron Stebner's blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2009/02/20/9436778.aspx

Hope these information helps.

Regards,

[MikeMio]

Thanks Jie. I really appreciate your help with this.

I also wanted to mention, for anyone else who may come across the problem,
the version of setup.bin that I had was 8.0.50727.42 and the working version
that Jie sent me is 9.0.30729.1 (you may have to rename it to setup.exe to
see the verision number).

Thanks for everyone else's input too.

Cheers,
Mike