Problems with Visual Studio 2005 Deployment Projects

[BillLanglais]

Hi all,

I have been trying to create a deployment project in Visual Studio 2005 and have been having lots of problems, not sure if this is the best place to ask so please suggest other fourms if more apropriate.

The first issue I have is when I try to build the Solution on Windows Vista, during the MSI creation I get a Windows is Installing message followed by a request for the Visual Studio ENU disks. I the go through a series of requests for Disk 1 and Disk 2 followed by installing progress bars. This cycle goes on for several iterations and finally the project is built with a sucess message. This happens ever time. I tried transfering the project to a different system on a XP box and it runs without the requests ans builds the projects fairly quickly. Also I tried running the VS2005 installer again and it says everything is installed. I have not tried to do a repair yet. Thought I would ask here first.

When I install the resulting MSI I do not get a program group entry in the start folders.

When I try to launch the application from windows explorer it runs ok if I install on a XP box. On Vista (x86) Buisness it fails because it thinks file exist that do not (using the FileInfo.exist class and method) and fails when it trys to write any files, allthough it continues to run as if the files were written. It finally dies when it tries to use a file that does not exist. The program uses the install directory for files so I expect this has something to so with Widnows Security on the Program Files Directory.

Any help would be apreciated. I have a hard deadline coming up and I need to burn my cd's for distribution!

Thanks!

Bill

[BillLanglais]

Well I figure out one of my problems - Start Menu.

The reason I do not get the start group is because you have to manually add it to the User's Program Menu in the Deployment Designer. You do this by:

Select the application in the Application Folder ( this will be the primary output from <app name)

Got the Actions Menu and select "Create Shortcut ..."

This will create a shortcut and drop it on the application folder

Drag the shortcut to the Use's Program Menu or User's Desktop

This will do the trick