531388 - Windows 7 Reports Installation Unsuccessful if cancelled

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 522065

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[vcsjones]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/3.0.195.33 Safari/532.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

When running the installer and cancelling either by clicking the "X" or a Cancel button, Windows 7 will think that there was an installation problem and prompt the user to try re-installing it with compatibility settings.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open the installer
2. Click cancel or "X"
Actual Results:  
Windows 7 thinks Firefox installed incorrectly and asks the user to reinstall.

Expected Results:  
Windows 7 should not think that there was an error and allow the installer to exit silently.

This behavior might be found in Windows Vista as well.

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Not sure if this is something we can fix, cause that prompt dialog appears often for me, whether I cancel, the install really fails, or it installed just fine, with a wide varity of apps too.

Comment 2

[vcsjones]

The concern is that if it is possible, it should be fixed. It leads a user to believe that the program was installed anyway despite canceling, and "incorrectly" on top of that.

A way to solve this problem is the modify the application manifest to contain the following XML:

<compatibility xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:compatibility.v1">
  <application>
    <!--The ID below indicates application support for Windows Vista -->
      <supportedOS Id="{e2011457-1546-43c5-a5fe-008deee3d3f0}"/>
    <!--The ID below indicates application support for Windows 7 -->
      <supportedOS Id="{35138b9a-5d96-4fbd-8e2d-a2440225f93a}"/>
  </application>
</compatibility>

This will tell Windows that the program is compatible with Vista and Windows 7 despite whatever it thinks if we are confident the installer works. Microsoft has more information on the manifest here: 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd371711%28VS.85%29.aspx

If I modify the installer's manifest to contain that XML, this behavior is no longer exhibited.