What extra steps do you take when creating MSI installers for Vista?

Question

I have a very simple Setup project that copies three dlls into the GAC. That's all it has to do. It works fine in XP, but on a Vista machine, it errors out stating that it cannot write to the file and to check permissions. I'm sure this has to do with some impersonation nonsense in Vista, but I'm not sure how to address it.

Has anyone else encountered this, and how did you overcome it if so?

Answer 1

If you're using Windows Installer, are you putting your assemblies into the special Global Assembly Cache folder? That has always worked for me on Vista and Windows 7. There is no need to use GACUtil or anything else, just put the assemblies in the right folder in the installer project.

Answer 2

You use the gacutil.exe to install the dlls? Or do you just copy the files?

Anyway, GAC should be avoided for custom dlls unless they're used by many applications. Keep the dlls close/local to the application: it will only cost you some diskspace, and it enables you to use simple Xcopy deployment.