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Strange issue with an app I'm helping on.

App attributes:

  • VS 2013
  • .Net 4.0
  • x86 target
  • WPF / C# / MVVM using Prism
  • key library: SlimDx

We are using the setup/installer extension noted here:

Create an application setup in visual studio 2013

Our first install/setup attempt has tested fine with a developer centric Win8.1 x64 laptop and a normal Win10 laptop install.

However, on a nearly virgin Win8.1x64 install, we found a couple of strange issues.

1) The custom file associations failed to apply (worked on other install tests). For some reason our *.custom is associated with Notepad on this unit. No errors were noted during installation.

2) The File-Open dialog (using Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog) fails to show any .custom files in the desired Filter settings. The file type names are properly listed by the dialog filter drop box, but they do not show the "(*.custom)" filter next to the names nor does the dialog list the files that are known to be present. All of this works fine on other installs. This prevents the app from opening the desired files.

Being primarily an embedded software/firmware developer, not sure how to debug such an issue.

So, the primary question is: what would cause the above behavior?

Secondary question: what are best practices for debugging post-install issues like this? (perhaps I need to ask this as another question...)

Thank you very much,

Community
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Matthew Eshleman
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    I'm not sure what's causing the problem. You stated no errors were detected during installation. But it's possible the installer did throw errors that were silently logged. Have you checked the windows log entries (run compmgmt.msc, and view the entries in `System Tools/Event Viewer/Windows Logs`)? Alternatively, run the installer again, but with explicit logging. See [this website](http://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-guide/msiexec.html) for a description of how to enable logging. – Chris R. Timmons Dec 23 '16 at 22:26
  • @ChrisR.Timmons I did not find anything useful/interesting in the logs for the day I installed that app. I went ahead and uninstalled and re-installed and now for some reason the associations are working correctly. Then, I noticed that the app crashes upon file load. Apparently SlimDx components were not installed correctly, so that is my next issue to see why they were not installed, despite being included in my installer. Thank you for your help! – Matthew Eshleman Dec 28 '16 at 20:01
  • SlimDX was installed fine. The installer was missing VS2010 C++ dependancies required by SlimDX. Now fixed. Installing fine everywhere now. Still no idea and unable to reproduce the original file association failure. – Matthew Eshleman Jan 03 '17 at 19:21

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