Installing on Win95 (MDAC?)

[David Laplante]

I have made an application which I am distributing using an installer application (WiseInstaller). My vb application saves customer informations in a Access2000 DB (So I need DAO 3.6, and DAO 3.6 is included in MDAC 2.5, right?)

Here's what my installer do:
- Install MDAC 2.5 if required
- Install my vb application

I did this on Windows98 and it worked perfectly. Re-running my installer won't prompt me installing MDAC 2.5 a second time. Unfortunately it didn't worked that well on Windows95. The install goes normally but each time I will try re-installing my application, it'll prompt me for installing MDAC 2.5 again.

Any solution/comments? Thanks.

[funkyd77]

Not sure if this is any help but i've just been making installations (installshield) to try to handle NT4 / Win98 / Win95. Win95 was indeed the peculiar case - We found that we had to install MDAC 2.5 also, but on top of this for Win95 we had to install DCOM95.

It's a longshot and my problem doesn't sound exactly like yours but maybe it will help?

Although i think mdac may install dcom 95 silently if need be - not sure on that one either. Give me developing over distributing any day - i find it harder to distribute these bloody applications than to write them.

anyway - HTH

Mark

[David Laplante]

Originally posted by funkyd77
We found that we had to install MDAC 2.5 also, but on top of this for Win95 we had to install DCOM95. [...] Although i think mdac may install dcom 95 silently if need be - not sure on that one either

Yeah I think installing MDAC 2.5 automatically installs DCOM95 (Can anyone confirm this?)

Anyway, i'm still stuck with my problem.
(have you had any surprises when trying to install it to a nt station? Or the 98 version worked just as well?)

Thanks

[Gen-X]

One thing you might want to do is to "CHECK" for the version of whatever software you are after first.

I believe installed applications are placed somewhere in the registry and if you search for them you can find if MDAC is already installed.

I know Wise allows you to check the existance of registry keys and files and also the VERSIONS of that file. You cna check this and if you find that it is not the version of MDAC 2.5 get it to install.

Problem solved

[funkyd77]

Yeah - i've had hassles. I havn't crashed NT4 yet though the other guys have by installing comcat.dll - when i say crashed i mean the systems had to be re-installed - they wouldn't boot anymore (though the re-installation could just have been our IT guys taking to a small problem with a sledgehammer as per usual)

i corrupted win95 by installing nt versions of some dlls - yes i know *now* that some dlls with the same name are still operating system dependant. Comctl32.dll, comdlg32.dll, and winmm.dll were the offenders - so be careful if you are installing these. I think the problem was caused by a bug in the installshield program that scanned my vb6 app for file dependencies - i got the solution from support.installshield.com

Win 98 has been ok - though i've had hassles with it in getting my crystal reports to run.

It seems each platform has their own peculiarities - i don't even want to go near w2000 yet. Is it better for program distribution anyone?