Create a Installation setup for a windows form application in VS2010 using InstallShield limited edition

Question

I have succeeded in creating the setup.exe and it runs to completion. But on clicking the icon created I get an error message box stating: "Application has stopped working" with the 3 options, Close, Debug, check for online solutions.

The details of the problem are:

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   CLR20r3
  Problem Signature 01: zed axis.exe
  Problem Signature 02: 10.0.4925.7882
  Problem Signature 03: 51cadd13
  Problem Signature 04: Zed Axis
  Problem Signature 05: 10.0.4925.7882
  Problem Signature 06: 51cadd13
  Problem Signature 07: 4d69
  Problem Signature 08: b
  Problem Signature 09: System.IO.FileNotFoundException
  OS Version:   6.2.9200.2.0.0.256.72
  Locale ID:    1033

My guess was that it cant find the .exe file. But I don't know where I am going wrong could you help me resolve this.

Answer 1

FWIW, some people think that it's InstallShield (or similar tools) job to autodetect your dependencies and author them for you. In fact, InstallShield does have some functionality to achieve this. But IMO it's a hopeless attempt. For any programming endeavor step 1 is to determine the requirements and step 2 is to implement them.

Many will argue that the point of spending $ on InstallShield is to automate this. I couldn't disagree more. Automation is nice but at the end of the day it's my job to understand my deployment requirements and validate that they are implemented correctly.

You need to profile your application to understand what file is missing, add it to your installer and rinse and repeat. This could simply mean looking at the code, or using ILDASM or .NET Reflector or even ProcessExplorer to determine the missing component.