Using cmd.exe in a VS Setup Custom Action

I set my Custom Action to cmd.exe and adding these arguments:

/K XmlPreProcess.exe /x:"[SETTINGSFILE]" /i:"[TARGETDIR]web.config" [CUSTOMSETTINGS] /e:[ENVIRONMENTBUTTON] >log.txt 

I'm trying to either:

a) stop the command screen so I can read it

b) write the results to a file so I can read it.

[ENVIRONMENTUTTON] should be equal to QA - which I selected from a dialog form showing 4 radio buttons. [SETTINGSFILE] is a user-entered field also a a dialog form.

The command window flashes by, I don't have time to read it, and no log.txt is created.

Original I was trying to run just XmlPreProcess.exe, but same problem, it was given an error and I couldn't see the error to debug it.

Related questions: Making sense out on .MSI verbose trace - running a CustomAction How to debug failure of a custom action in an MSI/Setup project

Tried this once: msiexec /i "C:\MyPackage\Example.msi" /L*V "C:\log\example.log" but didn't give much 开发者_Go百科useful either - only confirmed that my values were substituting correctly in [SETTINGSFILE] and [ENVIRONMENTUTTON].

I'm posting as a new question because now I'm dealing specifically with cmd.exe.

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Which sequence is the custom action running in, and in what context?

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Some suggestions:

• you want to use "/c" instead of "/k" ("/c" stops after executing the command)

• ">log.txt" writes the output next to the executed file, which is most likely in the Temp folder (custom actions are extracted there); you can try something like this:

  >"[DesktopFolder]log.txt"

• on newer Windows versions "C:\log\example.log" can be created only if you use an elevated command window

I hope this helps.