Installing and Removing Components

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

The following guidelines relate to making applications easy to install and uninstall. They apply specifically to installing and removing individual components as opposed to entire applications. The Microsoft® Windows® installer has functionality to accomplish all of these guidelines. For more information, see the installer documentation in the Platform SDK at http://premium.microsoft.com/isapi/devonly/prodinfo/msdnprod/msdnlib.idc.

The following three recommendations are placed first because of their importance in preventing DLL versioning problems:

• Do not write to Windows system folders. (Recommended)
• Use Microsoft update packs to upgrade system components. (Recommended)
• Do not install globally shared DLLs. (Recommended)
• Do not overwrite core components. (Required)
• Do not decrement or remove core components during uninstall. (Required)
• Register all shared components during installation. (Required)
• Do not register self-registering components during installation. (Required)
• Do not ref-count core components during installation. (Required)
• Decrement the count on shared components while uninstalling. (Required)
• Leave a zero count if not removing a component during uninstall. (Required)
• Set count correctly for pre-existing unregistered shared components during installation. (Best Practice)