InstallShield error 6199 and other errors...

I am posting this here because the forums I have been visiting don't let me post unless I am registered. I don't want to register because this will be the only time I will post. So, I thought why not let Google search land up at this blog entry? That will keep things simple.

I got this unusual error and with the help of a friend, figured out that a "special" character had landed into the Installshield ISM file. Instead of "Author's" it had become "AuthorÉs" (I have used Alt+keypad 400 to generate this character in place the actual one I saw!).

This was figured out by opening the ISM file in the InstallShield editor while all the time, the internal error was showing up in the command line. It turns out that I have seen a lot of people using the ISsaBld.exe to generate the installers. So, the editor said - Line 1549 Col 100 has a special char, while the command line just generated "ISDEV: internal error -6199". Interesting isn't it?

There were other errors like the directory where the output was being generated was open by some process. So, I used SysInternals' ProcessExplorer to figure it out!

-raghav