[wix-users] Driver uninstallation

[Edwin Castro]

A shared component should look identical in all products. Same component
guid and same keypath (which implies files should be installed to the same
common shared directory, perhaps under C:\Program Files\Common
Files\MyCompany\Drivers) and same resources in the component. Wixlibs can
be useful in ensuring shared components are identical between products.

Alternatively, you could have a product that installs the shared component
and use a burn bundle to install the shared driver msi and the application
msi package.

No matter how you fix this into the future for systems that haven't had any
of the applications installed you will still need a strategy to fix up
already installed systems. You may need to uninstall all old applications
and replace them with new fixed applications. Didn't think through that too
much.

--
Edwin G. Castro


On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 6:05 AM Matthias Reuss via wix-users <
wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> we are installing some drivers with our software that are shared with
> other applications, i.e. there are some other installation packages that
> contain the same drivers.
>
> We use the DifXApp extension to install the drivers, using components like
> the following:
>
> <Component Id="SharedDriver_INF" Guid="{ANY-GUID}">
>     <File Id="SharedDriver.inf" Name="SharedDriver.inf" KeyPath="yes"
> Source="$(var.DriverSourcePath)\SharedDriver.inf" />
>     <File Id="SharedDriver.cat" Name="SharedDriver.cat"
> Source="$(var.DriverSourcePath)\SharedDriver.cat" />
>     <DifxApp:Driver AddRemovePrograms="no" PlugAndPlayPrompt="no"
> Sequence="12" />
> </Component>
>
> Where the target directory of the component is c:\Program
> Files\MyCompany\Drivers\SharedDriver, i.e. a subfolder of the installation
> directory.
>
> On uninstall, this does not only remove the "private" copy of the driver
> from that target directory, but also calls the driver uninstallation, which
> in turn may affect other software.
>
> How do I alter this behaviour, i.e. remove the files that installation
> copied to the installation directory, but not uninstall the driver, so that
> the device can still be used?
> I have not seen a matching attribute to DifxApp:Driver.
>
> Best regards
>
> Matthias Reuss
>
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