BUG: 16-bit setup.exe issues

[Allen Reese]

Some versions of InstallShield, 5 IIRC, have problems launching setup off
of a UNC path.

I was writing InstallShield installers for a while and ran into a bug
where some 16bit setup would fail off any UNC path because the
installshield code tries to get the drive letter of the UNC path and
fails.  I never had 8.3 related problems, but I ran into a lot of problems
if the drive I was trying to run the installers from was not mapped.  And
this was only with 16bit compatible installers.  If I did a 32bit only
installer, then it would install just fine via a UNC path, say
\\server\share\setup.exe  whereas, if I built the same installer but with
16bit setuport, it wouldn't install from the UNC path under 95 unless I
mapped the drive.  ;)

Check if the installer is an InstallShield installer, and if so that may
be part of the problem.  If you look in their KB any 16bit IS5 installers
have lots of UNC problems.  ;)

But then all of this was 1-2 years ago.

Allen Reese
Senior Software Engineer
Driversoft, Inc.
allen at driversoft.com

On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Stephen Waters wrote:

> here's the scoop:
> 
> samba 2.0.5a on linux 2.2.12+raidpatch.
> 
> everything seems to work great except that 16-bit setup.exe files have
> trouble finding requisite .dlls in the current working directory if
> there are any non-8.3-compliant directories in the path.
> 
> e.g., 
> 
> 2 files, setup.exe setup.dll, in \\server\public\long_dir_name\temp\
> if execute setup.exe it will give an error saying that it cannot find
> setup.dll; however, if i move \\server\public\long_dir_name\temp\ to
> \\server\public\temp\ setup.exe finds setup.dll just fine.
> 
> our Windows NT 4.0 server did not have any problems with this setup so i
> thought either 1) there is a bug in samba or 2) the client is stupid and
> NT has a workaround. i vote for [2], but i'd really like to see a
> workaround.
> 
> i changed default case to upper when trying to figure out what was
> wrong.
> 
> 
> -stephen waters
> internal sysadmin
> amicus, inc.
>