I have been asked to add the files needed for the FlowChart Pro ActiveX Control DLL to our Windows Installer (MSI 2.0) kit so that they can be installed with our product.

I have added FlowChartPro and FcxVisioExport.DLL, plus the vxt file. The DLLs are set to COM extract during installer build and they appear to extract correctly: there are 3 entries for FcxVisioExport and 150 for FlowChartPro. I'm using InstallShield DS9. However, when our application calls FlowChartPro, the control does not open.

My colleague has determined that it needs another regsvr32 after installation to make it work and if I compare Registry dumps before and after this, I can see that there are several more Registry Keys being created. One example is CLSID {0094498F-27FB-4727-873A-395FA1AAC1D9}, but there are 14 others as well as a bunch of root-level FlowChartPro.xxx Keys from AnchorPattern to XMLWriter and MindFusion.FlowChartPro.xxx.

DEPENDS doesn't show any missing dependent DLLs on the build machine (running W2K Pro SP-4 with VS6), so I don't think it's that.

I added GDIPLUS to my kit as well as having it on the PATH, but that made no difference. It's installed into the same directory as the other DLLs.

Is this a bug, or something I am doing wrong? One possibility is that I have the .vxt in a different directory during the install build - it's installed into the same place though. Or is it always necessary to register the DLLs after installation? If the latter, I will have to create a merge module to put them in because everything else is extract at build.

Thanks for any suggestions,

David

There is such a property that can be set on a file-by-file basis. However, it introduces InstallShield self-un/registration Custom Actions to the InstallExecuteSequence and these can interfere with "other stuff" (technical term ).

In general, it is best to use "COM extract at build", with the development system set up according to the requirements. This *should* generate ideal results for the installation, while registration at install time is dependent on the target system and can be affected by missing DLLs.

Of course, there really shouldn't be any difference, assuming the target system *is* suitable... We are limiting installs to W2K and higher (not including Vista, yet).

Thanks for the rapid response,

David

Hi Stoyan,

My understanding is that "COM extract at build" uses the Registry Spy method to pick up Registry entries that are made when DLLs etc are called to self-register. I arrange to have a bunch of dependent DLLs accessible on the PATH so that this works correctly, which it normally does, but sometimes there are problems with the build order.

Anyway, I have separated the FlowChartX files into a separate merge module and set them to self-register during installation, and that seems to be working.

Thanks,

David