Disable Windows ComCtrls manifest in InstallShield

I am building a windows installer for my .NET application and it looks like InstallShield (2012 Spring - Premier Edition) is adding Windows Common-Controls manifest to my icons converting them to DLLs.

This is hitting my application's performance as OS encounters a page fault as it tries to parse the icon image on launch.

Here is the manifest that IS is appending.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
<assemblyIdentity
    version="1.0.0.0"
    processorArchitecture="X86"
    name="CompanyName.ProductName.YourApplication"
    type="win32"
/>
<description>InstallShield Icon Res</description>
<dependency>
    <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity
            type="win32"
            name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
            version="6.0.0.0"
            processorArchitecture="X86"
            publicKeyToken="<>"
            language="*"
        />
    </dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
<trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
    <security>
        <requestedPrivileges>
            <requestedExecutionLevel
                level="asInvoker"
                uiAccess="false"/>
        </requestedPrivileges>
    </security>
</trustInfo>
</assembly>

Solution

First a short digression into why this is happening. The Icon table, where Icons need to be stored to support Windows Installer advertisement, requires that "Icon files that are associated with shortcuts must be in the EXE binary format and must be named such that their extension matches the extension of the target". Thus InstallShield builds the correct format file. And by "build" I really mean it stuffs the icon data in a resource on a template EXE file.

So what's the upshot? You can change the resulting manifest by editing the template. The template is stored in ...\Support\_IsIcoRes.exe, and if you open that in Visual Studio or another resource editor, you can examine or even edit the manifest in RT_MANIFEST (24) \ 1. This file isn't signed (yet) because the build process will have to modify it, and thus would invalidate any signature, so your edits should be safe. That said, keep a backup of the original in case things go awry.