How to prevent 'program may have been uninstalled' message in Vist

[Rob]

Strictly speaking, this isn't an MSI question, as the tech used in the
installer that I'm currently maintaining predates Windows Installer; however,
I don't know where else on the MS Forums to post this. I'm having a problem
under Vista and Win2k8 Server (and, presumably, Win7) where, under certain
conditions, after our application (a Web server) is uninstalled from the
control panel, an error message box comes up, after the installer is done,
which says that the application may have already been uninstalled, and do you
want to remove it from the Programs and Features list (with Yes and No
buttons). In the situation where this message box occurs, the install has
initiated a reboot, and it is no longer in the ARP list after the reboot, so
the error message is not necessary.

How do I prevent the error message from happening? I've tried putting an
entry in the registry at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Compatibility Assistant\Persisted with the
path of the copy of the installer that the ARP runs, but it does not help in
this case. (It does prevent the similar UAC message that used to come up
after a Modify install.)

I've explained the problem in a bit more detail at
<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1664683/how-to-prevent-program-may-have-been-uninstalled-message-in-vista>.

[Wilson, Phil]

I have only seen this when the program faults in some way (or isn't actually
at the location pointed at by UninstallString). Is it possible that the
progam is faulting in that scenario?
--
Phil Wilson
The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590592972

"Rob" <R...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:0AA58567-6F6E-4EDF...@microsoft.com...

[Rob]

As far as I know, the program is behaving as it should. After further
experimenting to try to discover why the error message is happening, I
discovered that it seems to have to do with our uninstalling of IIS. (We
install/uninstall IIS and ASP (or just ASP alone if IIS is pre-installed
without ASP) by launching a pkgmgr.exe command. Since uninstalling all of IIS
would cause pkgmgr to reboot the system, we include the /norestart option in
the command and then have the installer reboot later. (Having the installer
reboot in this way does not cause the control panel's error message on its
own. As a test, I modified the installer so that it would reboot even if IIS
is kept in the system and did not get the error message. I also tried it the
other way around: getting our installer to remove IIS without rebooting.
Still no error message.) Something about uninstalling IIS programmatically is
causing the control panel to throw up that error message box when our
installer makes the system reboot. When the installer is run directly to do
the uninstall, there is no error message, so it's definitely the control
panel that's showing the message.

"Wilson, Phil" wrote:

> I have only seen this when the program faults in some way (or isn't actually
> at the location pointed at by UninstallString). Is it possible that the

> program is faulting in that scenario?