Preventing the Removal of Assemblies from the Global Assembly Cache During Upgrades

InstallShield 2019 Express Edition

Project • This information applies to Express projects.

By default, upgrades that are created in the Upgrade Paths view are configured to remove the earlier version of the product before installing the new version. That is, the RemoveExistingProducts action is scheduled before the InstallFinalize action. This default sequencing behavior may cause a problem if the product includes an assembly that is installed to the global assembly cache (GAC): after the upgrade is applied, the assembly may be missing from the GAC. The issue occurs because Windows Installer cannot properly reference count the assembly; therefore, it is removed but not reinstalled during the upgrade.

To work around this Windows Installer issue, you can configure your project in InstallShield so that the new version of your product is installed before the earlier version is removed.

To configure your project so that upgrades are installed before earlier versions of your product are removed, and to prevent the removal of the assemblies from the GAC:

InstallShield reschedules the RemoveExistingProducts action so that it occurs after the InstallFinalize action.

Tip • To revert back to the default behavior, click the Resequence RemoveExistingProducts button again.

To learn more about the Windows Installer issue, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 905238.

See Also

RemoveExistingProducts Action (Windows Installer Help Library)

InstallFinalize Action (Windows Installer Help Library)

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