Problems with PIA installation using Windows Installer

[SasaT]

We have a problem which is very strange and hard to reproduce.

Created an Outlook Add-In setup and included PIA package to the main setup
using bootstrapper package and prerequisites checkbox. Prerequisite
checkboxes for PIA is checked!

On 95% of computers PIA is correctly installed, but on few computers it
looks like setup.exe is ignoring attached PIA package and never installing
it. The consequence is an add-in which never loads into Outlook.

Tried to log setup process but there was no information about the PIA msi in
the log.
Also, tried toremove condition when installing PIA package, but on few
computers even then PIA was never installed.

Thx, Sasa

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Can you pin down how the machines where the PIA isn't being installed differ
from the ones where it is being installed? Version of Office, SKU, whether
or not Framework was installed before installing Office, admin rights,
Windows version are some of the things to look at.

 

[SasaT]

Can you pin down how the machines where the PIA isn't being installed differ
from the ones where it is being installed? Version of Office, SKU, whether
or not Framework was installed before installing Office, admin rights,
Windows version are some of the things to look at.

 

[SasaT]

Hi Ken...

Both machines are XP's, users have admin rights, same version of Office
(2007 + SP) and Framework installed. I am not sure if theOffice was installed
before or after Framework...

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

If Office 2007 was installed before the Framework was installed the Office
PIA's weren't installed. If the Framework was installed prior to
installation of Office 2007 then the PIA's were installed by Office unless
specifically excluded from the installation. In addition, if Office was
installed before the Framework then most likely Extensibility.dll and
stdole.dll weren't installed either.

Are you sure it's really a PIA problem and not Extensibility or stdole
missing? Are you sure that your installer is actually installing the PIA's
at all? Is there any message or other indication that the PIA installation
is being performed? Maybe where it works the PIA's were already installed?

Other than that you have to do more detective work to see what's different.
Can those users run the installation for the PIA redistributables directly
from the UI?

 

[SasaT]

PIA is not installed on all machines before our installation, for test
purposes I even deinstalled it on computers where it was installed before
running my installation.
I believe it is Windows Installer problem, because Installer did not start
additional setup packages (PIA), even when all install conditions are
disabled/removed and packages must be installed each time.
On the very same machine I am able to install PIA manually.
Sasa

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

If you run the MSI file directly you won't get the pre-requisite checks and
installation of any of your dependencies. It's the setup.exe program that
does that and then chains the installation to the MSI file. That sounds like
what you're seeing.

You'd need to use one of the commercial installation packages to get a
combined setup.exe that incorporates the MSI file in itself.