installshield: Windir returns c:\documents & settings\fcuser\windows instead of c:\windows

Question

we have a setup developed in installshield vr 6.3. it is a self extractable single setup. it work fine in most on most of the Windows version but on Windows server 2003 64bit in Execution mode when doing RD it return user windows directory against WINDIR i.e. c:\documents & settings\fcuser\windows instead of C:\Windows. According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=186499 it should work fine when i change the compatibility bit of Setup but it didn't. i tried changing compatibility bit of these key too (INSTRUN, SETUP and SETUP1 ) but it didn't work either. but when i when i run the setup within the self extractable by extracting it work fine.

Answer 1

InstallShield 6.3 is 10 years old, released when Windows 2000 had just come out. There were no 64-bit Windows OSes at that time. I'm not surprised you're having trouble. You really should think about using a modern version of InstallShield, or migrate to something like Wix/NSIS if upgrading is not financially possible.

As I work-around to using WINDIR, you could try getting this Registry value: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRoot

Or try to get the value of this environment variable:
%SYSTEMROOT%