Microsoft KB Archive/225080

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INFO: Check for Windows Components Before Installation

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Q225080

This article discusses a Beta release of a Microsoft product. The information in this article is provided as-is and is subject to change without notice.

No formal product support is available from Microsoft for this Beta product. For information about obtaining support for a Beta release, please see the documentation included with the Beta product files, or check the Web location from which you downloaded the release.

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The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface (API), included with:
 * the operating system: Microsoft Windows 2000

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SUMMARY
Your application's Setup program should check for the correct versions and locations of all required Windows components before installation. The Windows Installer and File Installation API functions help provide a standard way to organize and manage application files and components.

MORE INFORMATION
Windows 2000 includes upgraded components, such as DirectX and TAPI, from previous versions of both Windows 9x and Windows NT. It is not safe to assume that the files that make up these components will always be in any specific directory or folder. Setup programs that hard-code these paths will break if the user's system is configured differently than expected.

Note that it is also not safe to assume that related components will co-exist on a machine. You should check for each component that your application requires individually.

The Windows registry is the only reliable source of information for the location of all Windows components. The Windows Installer and the File Installation API functions provide a consistent, reliable way to extract this information from the registry and determine where these components currently exist or should be installed.