Joy of Setup » hints http://www.joyofsetup.com Bob Arnson's blog about setup and servicing Tue, 29 Jun 2010 02:41:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Make sure features are always enabled so they can be removed http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/05/16/make-sure-features-are-always-enabled-so-they-can-be-removed/ http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/05/16/make-sure-features-are-always-enabled-so-they-can-be-removed/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 16:29:50 +0000 Bob Arnson http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/05/16/make-sure-features-are-always-enabled-so-they-can-be-removed/ The WiX installer had a bug that I noticed during our transition from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2008. If you had the Votive feature installed for VS2005 and VS2008, then uninstalled VS2005, the Votive feature was "orphaned" and couldn’t be uninstalled. The cause is that the Votive features are enabled only when the corresponding version of Visual Studio is installed. (The Feature/@Level attribute is 0 with a Condition child element to enable it.) MSI sees the feature as disabled in maintenance mode and won’t remove it.

Oops.

The solution is easy, though: Add OR REMOVE to the condition that enables the feature. That ensures the feature is enabled during whole-product uninstall or an attempt to remove that particular feature.

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