I hate to ask the same question others have asked in Stackoverflow, but I still can't figure out why Installaware 7.0 R2 has this problem.
I need to build a installable CD for the previous version of my software. So, I am using what came with RAD Studio XE to do this. After creating a new Win32 setup for installation and customizing it, I built and test ran the project. In the middle of the installation, it raised an error, "Error Folder Path 'C:' contains an invalid character." So, I went back and created another win32 project and without doing any changes to anything I compiled, built and test ran the project. It worked without any error. After spending hours changing one thing at a time and testing it over and over again until I hit the error message again, I finally found the offending property in the Installaware. The error is raised thereafter once you change the Target folder textbox default value which is $PROGRAMFILE$\$TITLE$\ or Shortcut folder textbox default value which is $TITLE$. They only way to get passed this error is by not changing those default folder paths and allowing the user to change the folder path during installation.
It sort of annoying especially when you spend thousands of dollar purchasing these software from Embarcadero and Codegear. Is there a fix for this? Does anybody know?
These variables are resolved automatically to full folder paths. If you delete them or set an incorrect value, your package will not be able to resolve the installation path (hence the error). So the path edit controls should have valid default values.
If you don't want to allow the user to change your installation path, you can try deleting the dialog which offers this option. I'm not sure if that version of InstallAware supports it though.
If you don't like InstallAware, there are some good free or commercial alternatives which may help you.