I swear the more Microsoft "evolves" Visual Studio, the more ignorant the entire process becomes.
I have a Windows Service with 3 class libraries in it. I went into the properties for each class library and set the platform target to x64. I did this same thing to the Windows Service as well as to the Test Console project I added to verify everything.
I can run the console application on my Windows 2008 R2 x64 server with no issues but the stupid installer keeps bombing out and telling me that I have a bad image. I did ensure that I had set the target platform of the installer to x64.
I have no idea idea was this stupid thing would be bombing out and would really appreciate any insights. I do reference other DLLs and those might be x86 but I thought if the main libraries were set properly that things would work...
I have finally figured this out – it has NOTHING to do with architecture, references or any other nonsense and everything to do with the installer itself. As this article explains – the Visual Studio Installer, by default, uses a 32 bit DLL and that is what causes the failures.
To overcome this problem, simply follow these steps:
That is it - save your MSI file in Orca and then deploy it – the x64 installation should work without any further issues.