Installing and Removing Components

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

The guidelines in this section relate to making applications easy to install and uninstall. They particularly apply to installing and removing individual components, as opposed to entire applications.

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

• Do not write to Windows system directories. (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)