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Asked: 2026-05-30T21:53:49+00:00

I’m trying to understand InstallShield (2009)/InstallScript on the fly, because I’m modifying someone else’s

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I’m trying to understand InstallShield (2009)/InstallScript on the fly, because I’m modifying someone else’s installation script.

One of the dialogs during the installation procedure previously had one textbox on it, asking for a SQL Server instance, assuming a certain database name. Now I’ve just completed an enhancement enabling you to choose any database name, not just the default, and I need to add a field to this dialog so the user can input the chosen DB name. Monkey see, monkey do, just make a new control and duplicate and adapt whatever functionality the form had for the first textbox – easy enough, right?

Umm… problem here. It seems that the “SdShowDlgEdit1” form is a generic thing that gets shipped with InstallShield, and is used all over, wherever you have a dialog that needs one textbox. Change that form, and it changes everywhere that it’s called… so now I have a spurious 2nd textbox appearing all over my installation wherever there was a single text box before.

Oops. Undo changes, and change the reference to “SdShowDlgEdit2”, which is – you guessed it – InstallShield’s standard form for dialogs needing 2 textboxes. Now that would be great…. excepting that the previous developer got there before me and added a “browse” button to that form for a place where he needed the 2nd text box to contain a folder path. I don’t want that “browse” button, and I can’t delete it.

So I think, why don’t I create a custom form of my own, and not get under anyone else’s toes? So I clone the form, rename the new instance to “EnterDbDetails”, delete the “Browse” button and make the form look just right.

Then I go back into the InstallScript to redirect to “EnterDbDetails” and discover that the EzDefineDialog function requires me to pass in the “Resource ID” of the form. Now what was it again… 12018… great… fill in all necessary details, compile, build, and give it a whirl. Looks lovely, all the right default values are filled into the two text boxes – but hey! Why is the browse button there? And why is the text on the labels not what I set?

Back to InstallScript, check the Resource ID – turns out that the original “SdShowDlgEdit2” also has a Resource ID of 12018. Well, that explains that nicely. Silly that InstallShield allows you to have two forms with the same ID, but whatever… So let’s go back to my “EnterDbDetails” form and change the ID…

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… but the Resource Identifier property is read-only! WTF?

So now I can’t use any of the standard forms, and I can’t use a custom form because it won’t let me change the resource ID.

I am stumped. Can anyone please explain how you are supposed to do something like this, which really ought to be the simplest thing in the world?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Creating New Custom Dialogs in InstallScript and InstallScript MSI Projects

    Quote from the site (2015 edition) :

    To create a custom dialog, you need to perform the following general steps:

    1. Use the New Dialog Wizard to add a new custom dialog to your project. For more information, see Using the New Dialog Wizard to Add a New Custom Dialog to an InstallScript or InstallScript MSI Project.
    2. Add controls to the dialog. For more information, see Adding a Control to a Dialog in an InstallScript or InstallScript MSI Project.
    3. Create a script function that loads the dialog into memory, displays it on the screen, handles the end user’s interaction with the dialog’s controls, and closes the dialog when the user is finished with it. For more information, see Using InstallScript to Implement Custom Dialogs.
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