Blank list in "Add or Remove Programs"

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kevin W
  • Start date Start date
K

Kevin W

I just discovered this today at the final stage of the verification
test. Open "Add or Remove Programs" from the control panel and it
should show a list of "Currently installed programs". Mine shows a
blank page on the Target PC. It should at least display our custom
application.

I installed our custom application on my development PC and it shows up
fine on the list. What components may be required to populate the
"Currently installed programs" list? I googled it and searched throu
the newsgroup, nothing!

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have read that people ran
this fine so hopefully this should be a simple fix. Thanks in advance!
 
BTW, "Add or Remove Programs" doesn't shut down properly either. After
first run, I have to manually terminate "rundll32.exe" in order to
launch it again. The rundll32.exe is hanging up on something and it
eats up 98% CPU. Any idea?
 
In case anyone is interested, this is how I solved the problem.

I ran filemon on the Embedded PC and found that appwiz.cpl cannot find
MSI.dll. Next I ran Dependency Walker on the development PC to find
several missing dll in my built image. I always resolve all
dependencies but somehow the follow necessary components are missing:

Primitive: MSI
Visual C++ Runtime Libraries (Side X Side)
Software Installation Group Policy MMC Snap In

It added additional 30 MB to my already 150MB footprint. I am sure I
can eliminate one or more of them and can still fix the problem, but it
just takes too damn long to test it! I will update this if I have time
to test it later.

I thank everyone for making this newsgroup a great resource. Lets all
try to follow up to benefit others!
 
Kevin,

When you deal with "Add/Remove Programs" functionality on XP/XPe you should add "Windows Installer Service" component and resolve
its all dependencies.
This will bring all the components from your list except the Installation Group Policy which may not be required.
 
Thanks for your advice. Wish I knew that. =)

BTW, I found out Visual C++ Runtime Libraries (Side X Side) is not
needed for the add/remove control panel. So probably just Primitive:
MSI is enough to solve the problem in my case.
 
I have all following components installed, but still get blank jpage on my
target pc by open "add/remove programs" from control panel. Any idea?

Primitive: MSI
Visual C++ Runtime Libraries (Side X Side)
Windows Installer Service
 
Add Remove Programs is not fully supported on XP Embedded. It will only show
and remove applications that are installed post-FBA, but will not show
anything included on the image itself.
 
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