Notify icon not always appearing in the system tray after a setup, but still functional

Question

First of all, when I start the application normally (double-clicking on the exe), it works perfectly: the notify icon is always appearing in the system tray. It also works well when the application is launched at the end of an msi Setup (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1668274/run-exe-after-msi-installation).

However, when the application is launched from an msi running in quiet mode, my notify icon isn’t always appearing, but the application is functional: I can access the contextual menu with a keyboard shortcut. I tested on three computers running under Windows XP and the success rate is around 50%. I also tested on Windows7: it works perfectly.

I know that there are some issues with the notify icons during the startup in Windows XP, but I don’t know if it is related (http://www.google.ca/search?hl=fr&q=notify+icon+not+appearing+Windows+XP&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

So, I was wondering if any of you guys ever experienced this problem. Do you think it’s a Windows XP bug? Or is it related to who is launching the application (msiexec vs .exe)? I don’t think it could be an error in my code, since it’s working well when I start it directly.

Answer 1

You must realize that when you run silent ( /quiet /qn UILevel=3 ) that the InstallUISequence doesn't run, only the InstallExecuteSequence does. Therefore you need to schedule your custom action to run at the end of the InstallExecuteSequence when running silently so that your C# program will run and place itself in the tray.

For those that question this requirement, it's fairly normal to do this. As an SMS Admin I would push out packages silently that would shut down a tray app, uninstall the old version, install the new version and put the try app back. All this without the agent barely notice it was ever missing.