How do I create a manifest for a windows installer?

Question

We have an installer for our application that must be downloaded and run with administrator privileges, like many other installers. However, the installer isn't named "setup.exe", so Windows doesn't automatically detect it as requiring elevation to run.

Changing the installer name to make things elevate properly sounds pretty messy, frankly. This article talks a lot about UAC and elevation, and it says that you can use a manifest to make something require authorization.

So, we'd just love to create a manifest for our installer. However, how do we ensure the manifest is present? If the user just downloads our_application_v13.exe, how do we ensure they get the manifest too? AFAIK the manifest would have to be a file named "our_application_v13.exe.manifest" in that case.

Since they're just downloading a file from our web site, how do we make sure they get the manifest too? Can we build it into the executable in some way, or otherwise flag the executable as requiring elevation? We are using an installer tool from hundreds of years ago that we can't change, so it doesn't have any capabilities relevant to this.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The manifest can also be in the application's native resource section (inside the EXE).

Answer 2

If the installer tool allows you to change/attach/edit the resources of the generated EXE file, you can add the manifest file as a resource with a resource type of 24 (RT_MANIFEST in the windows headers) and a resource id of 1.

If The installer tool does not have the built in facility to insert resources, then you might have to write a tool to post-process your install.exe file to insert the resource. Look up the Windows APIs BeginUpdateResouce and EndUpdateResource. They have some limitations - they tend not to work if the EXE doesn't already contain any resource files at all, but most install tool generated exe files contain at least a version info resource.

Also, if the install is digitally signed that will have to be done after insertion of the manifest resource.

Answer 3

What about the files having .MSI extension???

Answer 4

There is Resource Tuner Console from Heaventools Software.

Resource Tuner Console is a command-line tool that enables developers to automate post-processing of your install exe file and insert the manifest resource. See specifically the Adding Application Manifest page for greater details:

• http://www.heaventools.com/rtconsole-embed-manifest.htm