This is just a heads-up and I'm recording my own thoughts. I mentioned several weeks ago that setup projects (vdproj) support can return to VS2013 via the Installer Projects Extension <http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/9abe329c-9bba-44a1-be59-0fbf6151054d>. I was most pleased by this and have resurrected many setup projects and have been using them successfully ... until I tried them on Windows XP and Server 2003, which results in "The installer was interrupted" failure on the first wizard step.
Examining an msiexec log shows "DIRCA_CheckFX return value 3". Ensuring that Framework 4 and Installer 4.5 are present makes no difference. Extensive web searches reveal no useful advice, but there are a few hints that it's a bug in the setup project templates (which I think is feasible!). I used orca to disable the failing conditions inside the MSI's sequence tables and it got the wizard through to the 3rd wizard step, but then I received some weird entry point failure in InstallUtil. At this point I officially gave up. So I remain confused about the exact cause of this problem, or the cure: is it the old operating systems, some dependency, or a bug in the setup templates. Uh?! Maybe I should consider migrating permanently to WiX, which I'll do if I can find a nice GUI over it so I don't have to write XML by hand. Greg K P.S. Setup project generated web installers require IIS 6 metabase compatibility on if you're using IIS 7. This didn't wasn't relevant to my situation above, but it was worth mentioning as lots of people have stumbled over this subtle dependency when the installation fails with the same unhelpful "interrupted" failure.
