preventing reinstall

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: semhelp (semhelp_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 11/04/04 

Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 07:48:01 -0800

If a user deletes or renames files that were created as part of an
installation, the windows installer forces a reinstall before the application
can run. Is there a way to prevent this?

For example, suppose I develop a paint program that creates a "samples"
folder with sample bitmap files. If the user deletes or renames these files,
I don't want the reinstaller to run.

I set the "Vital" property on these files to FALSE, but that didn't seem to
do anything.