Visual Studio 2015 msi build initiates another installation

Question

I\'m trying to build an msi project in my VS2015 solution. I had installed the VS Installer Projects Extension.

Everything was working great just a few days ago.

Answer 1

I had the same problem with VS 2015 asking for VS 2008 installation package.

Found this which solved my problem:

1. Open a cmd as admin.

2. Go to directory C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\MSI Tools

3. run: regsvr32.exe /u mergemod.dll"

4. run: regsvr32.exe mergemod.dll"

Link to the hint

Answer 2

Self-Repair: What you are seeing is Windows Installer Self-Repair (also known as resiliency or self-healing). Essentially Windows Installer detectes that the wrong file or resource is on disk or in the registry and starts a a repair operation to correct the situation. Failing to correct the situation (for various technical reasons described below), this process may repeat itself endlessly whenever an application is launcher or a COM server is invoked, or a file association is triggered (and a few other triggers).

Here is a previous answer which describes the essence in a minimal sense: Why does the MSI installer reconfigure if I delete a file?

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Self-Repair In Detail: More than anyone wants to know about self-repair:

1. Self-repair - explained
2. Self-repair - finding real-world solutions
3. Self-repair - how to avoid it in your own package

Answer 3

Thanks @stuartd and @PhilDW for your help. Posting the answer here in case someone else experiences this. Your suggestion in turning on Logging gave me more to search on.

I had to install Orca from the Windows SDK to update a DLL.

Found the answer here