This question comes up so often, I should have written this blog entry years ago. The root issue is that the Windows Installer does not save Property values for you. That means if the user enters values in the install UI or passes them on the command-line, those values will be not be present during repair, upgrade nor uninstall. That last one, uninstall, catches people all the time. So let's solve the problem simply then solve it completely.

About a year ago we started WiX v3.5. At that time we decided on a new plan for WiX v3.0 that moved the Votive for Visual Studio 2010 and Burn features out of WiX v3.0 into WiX v3.5. The goal was for v3.0 to ship earlier. That worked out well because WiX v3.0 released last July.

Over the last week and a half, the Visual Studio team that contributes heavily to the WiX toolset put the finishing touches on Votive to support Visual Studio 2010 RC. Want to use WiX in VS2010 RC? Download the x86 or x64 Wix35 MSI from here: http://wix.sourceforge.net/releases/3.5.1419.0/.