Wix burn custom theme prevents exe from running on other computers

Question

Basically I've created a small bundle with a custom theme, it works fine on my development computer, however when I try and run it on any other computer the exe doesn't even run. I discovered that the cause of this is the custom theme and if I remove this and use the default then the exe runs fine.

I've tried adding the xml file to the project, tried different methods of referencing the file but with no improvement. Is there something I have to do to package the theme with the install?

Answer 1

My guess: you're trying to run these on Windows XP, and those machines don't have GDI+ installed. Probably means you're using an unsupported image file type for one of your graphics. Try using .ICO files instead of JPG files, or BMP files. Then XP will support them for sure.

Burn doesn't give the best error reporting, so you'll have to do a lot of trial and error.

Answer 2

If your theme is based off of the standard HyperlinkLicense or RtfLicense themes, you can add the theme and logo files using the BalExtension:

<Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"
     xmlns:bal="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/BalExtension">

and changing the BootstrapperApplicationRef to contain the following:

<BootstrapperApplicationRef Id="WixStandardBootstrapperApplication.RtfLicense">
  <bal:WixStandardBootstrapperApplication
    ThemeFile="path/to/theme.xml"
    LicenseFile="path/to/license.rtf"
    LogoFile="path/to/logo.png" />
</BootstrapperApplicationRef>