Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Ryan M Helgeson

Jeff A Zimniewicz

Gary Paolo Raden

Phillip J Marino

Crista Johnson

William M Nelson

The present invention provides a system and method to facilitate installation and/or removal of components in which one of the components is a shared component. The components are installed based on a valid order, such that shared components are installed after other components have been installed. According to one aspect, one or more properties associated with a shared component may be manipulated to facilitate installation and/or removal of components, including the shared component and dependent components.

System and method to facilitate installation and/or removal of components

A multiple stage installation system for the installation and setup of a suite of applications segregates and organizes the preparation, installation, clean up, optimization, etc. into functional groupings that define the multiple stages of the installation process. These functional groupings include actions to be performed on behalf of and to any and all of the applications to be installed. While different stages may be defined, the system preferably includes a pre-install phase, an install phase, and a post-install phase during which different functional activities are performed. An optimization phase may also be included to allow optimization of applications that have already been installed. In a preferred embodiment, the applications to be installed implement a COM interface that contains a method for each stage supported. The core installation system determines the installation order for the applications, acquires the COM interface from the application, and for each install stage, calls the appropriate method on that interface. Each application's method for a given stage is called before any methods of any applications for the next stage.

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Snohomish, WA, United States of America

Ryan M Helgeson