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I have a problem with InstallShield and was hoping someone could shed some light. I have a fairly complex InstallShield project (MSI), which includes files added manually, and "Dynamic Linked" folders.

The installer works fine and all the files are installed.

However, if the user navigates to c:\Program Files\My Application\Bin\ and deletes any file (even if it is a plain text file that's included with the application), then the next time they launch the application, Installer will run again, and re-install the deleted files.

I understand that this might be an issue with how Windows keeps track of installed files, but I want users to be able to delete files, without having the installer 'repair' the installation automatically.

I've looked at InstallShield documentation, and couldn't find any place where I could 'mark' a file as "Important" or something like that. Only Specific files shouldn't be deleted. But all other un-marked files can be deleted by users, and wouldn't cause any malfunction of the software. These additional files are just pre-populated data and examples, which can be safely deleted by the user if they wish.

Any recommendation, or a pointer in the direction is greatly appreciated.

Adrian Mole
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Harold Dunn
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  • [Self-repair is a built-in feature of MSI](https://stackoverflow.com/a/49613785/129130). It is not normal procedure to install files that can be deleted. You would normally install them to an archive file and extract them to a user profile location for users to see them and delete at will. This will decouple the files from deployment concerns. – Stein Åsmul Nov 25 '20 at 03:20
  • [This is the shortest explanation of self repair](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5981302/why-does-the-msi-installer-reconfigure-if-i-delete-a-file/5983973#5983973) that I have written. – Stein Åsmul Nov 25 '20 at 03:21

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