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POPreventing uninstallation of DIFxApp-installed drivers
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copied!<p>I’m creating an installer for a software application that interfaces with a hardware device. The hardware device uses an <a href="http://www.ftdichip.com/Products/ICs/FT232R.htm" rel="nofollow">FTDI USB serial interface</a>. I need to install the <a href="http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm" rel="nofollow">FTDI USB drivers</a> (if the user doesn’t already have them) along with the software, and I’m using <a href="http://wixtoolset.org/" rel="nofollow">WiX</a> and the <a href="http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/difxapp_xsd_driver.htm" rel="nofollow">DIFxApp extension</a> to accomplish this.</p> <p>So far, so good. That all works fine. I have separate MSI packages for my software and the 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of the drivers, and I’m using <a href="http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/authoring_bundle_intro.htm" rel="nofollow">Burn</a> to bundle them all up into a single installer. The driver MSI packages deploy the driver files to a subdirectory of my application installation folder, and then DIFxApp installs the drivers to the appropriate system locations from there. (Which seems silly – they’re only used during install; why keep them hanging around after that? <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff543652%28v=vs.85%29.aspx" rel="nofollow">A copy is kept in the system driver store, after all.</a> It would be preferable to extract them to a temporary folder, install the drivers, and then clean them up. But evidently, <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=29454351" rel="nofollow">that’s the way DIFxApp works</a>.)</p> <p>But the FTDI chipset is used by a lot of different devices, and it is likely that a user will own other devices that also require the FTDI drivers. In testing, I have found that DIFxApp uninstalls the drivers when the software is uninstalled. This is undesirable, because it will break any other FTDI-based devices the user owns, requiring the user to reinstall the drivers to get those devices working again.</p> <p>I would like DIFxApp to leave the drivers installed on the user’s system when my software is uninstalled so that removal of my software does not affect the user's other devices.</p> <p>I <em>could</em> do this by setting the <code>Permanent</code> attribute on the <a href="http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/wix_xsd_msipackage.htm" rel="nofollow"><code>MsiPackage</code></a> or <a href="http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/wix_xsd_component.htm" rel="nofollow"><code>Component</code></a> that installs the drivers, but that will prevent the driver files that were deployed to a subdirectory of my application installation folder from being cleaned up. I want those removed along with my application; I just don’t want the driver removed from the system driver store, etc.</p> <p>It also looks like I could accomplish what I want by installing the drivers with a <a href="http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/44191/Drivers-Installation-With-WiX" rel="nofollow">DPInst custom action</a>. And it looks like the DPInst approach would support installing the drivers from a temporary folder and not require the driver files to hang around in my application folder for eternity. This would seem to be the pragmatic solution, but evidently <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=29454866" rel="nofollow">DPInst is discouraged in favor of DIFxApp in MSI-based installers</a>.</p> <p>What is the “right” way to handle this?</p>

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