When the Transitive property is set to False, subsequent installation or reinstallation of an application or component may produce unexpected results.
As an example, suppose that the Condition property for a file is set to VersionNT>=500 and the Transitive property is set to False.
In this example, the Condition property stipulates that the file will not be installed unless the installer determines the target computer's operating system is Windows 2000 (formerly called Microsoft Windows NT 5.0) or later. The Transitive property set to False stipulates that the installer will not reevaluate the Condition property after the initial installation.
This means that if the installer determines the operating system is Windows 95, it will not install this file, and it will save the False evaluation of the installation condition. If the operating system is later upgraded to Windows 2000 and you install or reinstall the application (or any application containing this component), the installer will not reevaluate the VersionNT>=500 condition, and the file will still not be installed or upgraded — even though now it should be.
To avoid this type of error, you can set the Transitive property to True.