I have a .NET project (VS2008 .NET 3.5) that builds an exe. I have an installer project as part of the same solution that creates an installer for that exe.
In the File System for the installer, I create a folder for my application under the User’s Programs Menu. In that new folder, I dump the .exe and .exe.config. I also create a shortcut in that same folder AND a shortcut on the desktop. The shortcut was created by right clicking on the “Primary output from Application(Active)” and selecting “Create shortcut to Primary output from Application(Active)”.
Everything installs fine. If I click on the .exe it runs fine. When I click on either of the shortcuts though, it pops up this small “Installing” pop up window with a progress bar. I have no idea where it came from or what it is doing.
Any ideas?
The reason the product keeps re-installing as that the second shortcut (that keeps re-installing) is an “Advertised ShortCut” . If you touch anything in the application’s target deployment directory then next time you run the application it will try to re-install to fix the issue.
See my post for a more detailed discussion:
http://ntsblog.homedev.com.au/index.php/2011/08/17/setup-app-config-during-msi-install-msi-re-installing/