Summary

Synopsis

Microsoft established a list of requirements that a product and its installation must fulfill in order to become certified for the Windows logo. The requirements outline criteria that help make a product more compatible, reliable, and secure when running on Windows systems. Products that meet the Certified for Windows Logo Program requirements can carry the Certified for Windows logo.

This article discusses the Certified for Windows Logo Program as well as the Windows Quality Validation Suite (plus InstallShield ICEs) in InstallShield.

Note: The article also applies to AdminStudio 2015 and the InstallShield 2015 that is shipped with AdminStudio.

Discussion

Qualifying for the Certified for Windows Logo Program

Products must be independently tested by a Microsoft-approved testing authority before they can be certified.

Windows Validation Suites in InstallShield

An important step in the release process for an installation project is to validate the completed MSI database. Microsoft provides a collection of ICE (internal consistency evaluator) tests for detecting many common errors and inconsistencies that can occur when authoring a Windows Installer installation. Validating your installation package or merge module may help you identify whether your product meets installation requirements for Microsoft?s programs. If a package or merge module fails one or more validation rules, InstallShield reports the specific rules that were violated and offers additional information to help you troubleshoot the problem.

If you are interested in qualifying for the Windows Logo Program, it is recommended that you use the InstallShield Validation Suites to validate your installation package. If you create a merge module in InstallShield, you can use the InstallShield Merge Module Validation Suites to validate your merge module.

To perform validation on an MSI database, pull down the Build menu, select Validate, and then select the desired validation suite.



Validation is performed on the completed MSI database and not the .ism project file, and thus you cannot perform ICE validation if your project encounters any build errors.

Validation progress information is displayed in the output window. When validation is complete, any errors or warnings that occur are displayed in the Tasks tab of the output window, as illustrated in the following figure. Clicking the hyperlinked rule name in the Error Code column displays information about that rule from the Flexera Software Knowledge Base.



Validating a Project after Every Build
By default, you initiate ICE validation manually. To specify that ICE validation should be performed automatically after each build, pull down the Tools menu, select Options, and then select the Validation tab. Next, select the "Perform validation using" check box and select the desired validation suite.



Naturally, performing validation after each build adds time to the build process, but can assist in catching potential errors earlier in the project development cycle.

Customizing Validation
InstallShield provides the ability to specify which validation rules to run when performing ICE validation. To select which tests to perform, click the Customize button on the Validation tab of the Options panel, pictured above.

For example, a Basic MSI project that uses functionality from the SQL Scripts view will report ICE17 warnings related to the SQLLogin and SQLBrowse dialog boxes. The ICE17 warnings occur because these two dialog boxes contain controls that are populated at run time, and not design time, and therefore do not have default information stored in the ListBox and ComboBox tables of the MSI database. To prevent these (harmless) warnings from being displayed, you can clear the ICE17 check box in the Customize Validation Settings panel.

In a similar fashion, you can indicate any other ICE rules to skip during validation. Note that this customization applies to the entire InstallShield environment, and not just to a single project.

InstallShield Best Practice Validation Suite
The Premier edition of InstallShield includes additional validation rules, called InstallShield Best Practice (ISBP) rules. The ISBP rules test for some common authoring errors and other best-practice violations in MSI packages.

Additional Information

• darice.cub
• ISBestPractice.cub
• ISVista.cub
• ISVistaMM.cub
• ISWin7.cub
• ISWin7MM.cub
• logo.cub
• mergemod.cub
• Vstalogo.cub
• XPlogo.cub

• Requirements for the Windows Logo Program
• Validating Projects