Missing files in installation of InstallShield 2011 LE on Windows 7?

Question

I have an InstallShield project (InstallShield 2011 Limited Edition) for Visual Studio 2010. The project is created on a machine running Windows XP (32-bit). It builds an installation package for a C# solution targeted to .NET 4.0 Full profile. However, the same project configuration fails to build installation packages on windows 7. It turns out that the installation of InstallShield itself is different in Windows 7 compared to Windows XP.

When building the installation package on WIndows 7, I get several errors like the following:

ISEXP : error : -1007: Cannot copy source 'C:\Program Files\InstallShield\2011LE\SetupPrerequisites\Windows Installer\3.1\x86\WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86.exe' to target ...

On Windows XP, there are 3 subdirectory structures in C:\Program Files\InstallShield\2011LE\SetupPrerequisites:

• Windows Installer
  • 3.1
• Microsoft .net
  • 4.0
• WindowsImagingComponent
  • x64
  • x86

These directories and there files are missing after installation of InstallShield on Windows 7.

If I add the files manually, the Windows 7 machine can build the InstallShield project without problem.

Is this a bug in InstallShield or have I missed some features? I would like to be able to build installation packages both on Windows 7 and Windows XP without having to patch the InstallShield installation itself.

Answer 1

Typically you right click | download the files from the redist screen. Only the .PRQ (XML) files are in the InstallShield installer. The rest are pulled down once as you need them.