Installshield sucks. Thanks Microsoft.

Adding an installation project to my solution in vs2010, i notice an “installshield le” option for installation projects. ok, whats this? I do some research and apparently microsoft is abandoning their own installation projects, and will be moving everyone to use this “light edition” of installshield in the future.

I’ve used installshield in the past. Surely it’s not as bad as it used to be.

I add the new installshield le project, and am instructed I need to download it. this requires registration with “flexera”, who apparently now owns installshield, or whatever. create an account, give all my personal info. get a registration key in the mail. download installer and run it.

now, go back to visual studio, try to add the installer project again. Please enter serial number first problem – error, cant authorize. what? go through registration process again and try with new key. finally works.

now i finally have an install project in my solution. go through the setup steps using the weird navigation system (yes, it’s weird).

ok, we’re ready! build. what? errors?

get some kind of crazy “cant set codepage for lcid 1033”, as well as some other nonsense. click the error message, and am take to the “flexera” site, which lists a bunch of matches on this error message. no real solutions found, the matches listed date back to 2009 and 2007, so definitely not something new. I still haven’t resolved this, but do not look forward to dealing with it.

So, not much has changed. Same old cryptic BS dealing with installshield, and apparently microsoft has given up trying to provide something better. So this is what you get with a mult-thousand dollar license of visual studio 2010. Thanks Microsoft! for the opportunity to remember something i hate worse than crystal report.

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