Shortcuts and MSI updates

Posted by Filip Navara on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Filip Navara
Published on 2010-06-11T12:22:43Z Indexed on 2010/06/16 6:22 UTC
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Filed under:

wix

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msi

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setup

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wix3

We have an installer for application that is compiled using WiX and each version is updated using a new setup package. The installer creates advertised shortcut in Start menu and users often copy this shortcut to desktop or other location. During an application update a major upgrade is performed and the old shortcuts are removed, which causes the ones copied by users to disappear. This causes a major annoyance to the users.

Is there a way to update advertised shortcuts when doing MSI major upgrade (ie. different product code)?
Or, is there a way to allow minor updates by just running the setup.msi file (without passing a REINSTALLMODE option on the command line)?
Or, is the only way to solve this problem to use non-advertised shortcuts?

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