Creating an installer, error The Folder path '.' contains an invalid character

Asked 6/2, 2009 at 16:32 Answered 30/1, 2015 at 15:58

I am trying to make an installer for a project I did not write, and I use the wizard to create the setup. Program Files Folder contains a favicon.ico, a custom dll, and Primary output from the project.

Whenever I build the installer and try to run it I get a, "The folder path '.' contains an invalid character." and the installer aborts. How can I fix this? What is going on?

Toinette answered 6/2, 2009 at 16:32 Comment(6)

What folder is it trying to install to? – Boathouse 6/2, 2009 at 16:38

Okay but where in the program folder, what is the path that it's installing to, or is it just c:\Program Folder. – Boathouse 6/2, 2009 at 17:8

It's whatever the environment variable is set to for program folder, which is usually C:\Program Folder – Toinette 6/2, 2009 at 17:10

I know that but what about the rest of the path is it just the Program Folder or is there a sub folder that it is being installed to. – Boathouse 6/2, 2009 at 18:10

See my answer I made before you commented, that was the case. It was trying to install it to an illegal path because of the manufacturer name. – Toinette 6/2, 2009 at 18:32

BTW, I've voted to close this as too localized. Assistance would be appreciated. – Toinette 6/2, 2009 at 18:32

Found the solution. At work when we install something and it asks for company name and user name we always put '.', well Visual Studio uses the company name for the setup projects as [Manufacturer]. I.E. it was trying to install to C:\Program Folder(x86).\ProjectName. To fix it I removed the [Manufacturer] from the folder path of ApplicationFolder.

Toinette answered 6/2, 2009 at 17:26 Comment(0)

I had the misfortune to have to track down this error. It turned out that VS2010(SP1) put \r\n in front of "Manufacturer" in the product section of the installer.vdproj. The name was entered in Properties section without any leading \r\n characters. VS2010 did this all on its own :-(( e.g. "Product" { "Name" = "8:Microsoft Visual Studio" .... "Manufacturer" = "8:\r\nMyManufacturerName" ..... "ARPCONTACT" = "8:\r\nMyManufacturerName" ... } Once I took out the \r\n by opening it in Notepad everything worked fine. This took a long time to track down. However I have come to expect this kind of shoddy product from Microsoft (and I am not even talking about WPF). These are giant killers of developer productivity and we developers are essentially acting as QA for Microsoft.

Formwork answered 30/1, 2015 at 15:58 Comment(0)

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