how to install a package using a windows system account with WiX?

Question

hi,

usually when you install a MSI package on windows, it is installed using the currently logged on user account. but i want to install it to a specific user account. for now, i want to install my MSI package using the system account. is it possible? how to do that?

thanks.

P.S. i am using Wix 3.5

Answer 1

Not that I would recommend it, but there is an old trick you can use to do this under the SYSTEM account...

First, you'll need to craft the installation command-line to install silently/without user input.** Something like msiexec.exe /i MyProgram.msi /qb- should work.

Second, you'll need to create a Scheduled Task (XP) or Task Schedule job (Vista/Win7) to execute the command, and have it run as the SYSTEM user. Set it for a time a few minutes in the future, et voila!

(** Okay, technically you could just run msiexec /i MyProgram.msi and configure the task to allow interaction with the local user, but this only works on Win2k and XP.)

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Alternately, you could use the great little SysInternals utility PSEXEC with the -s option to execute the process as the local SYSTEM user...