I have an application on a server in our domain; it's written in C# and uses the Word API. (The app runs through a list of medical reports, each a separate Word document, extracts information which it uses to alphabetize the patient on whom the report is made, and pushes the report content into a PDF.) The app appears to run fine when ...
Using WiX, my install will optionally launch one of my installed program files when it completes. However, when my application is launched by the installer, it is usually not displayed in the foreground of the user's desktop. It's buried under other windows, so it's not immediately clear to the user that the program is running. I've tri...
As part of a general move to Windows 7 - where all applications should have an "installer experience", I need to create installers for all of our application suite. I have looked at InstallShield, but this seems extremely expensive for what it does. What install products could I look at? The installers will need to be built unattended ...
I need to adapt existing WISE installers for 64-bit, but don't want to make copies of the existing installers. For future maintenance purposes, I want one project that produces both 32-bit and 64-bit installers. Googling this, I find indications that it's possible, but no straightforward documentation explaining what the correct approa...
I have an app that I need to distribute and want to sign it so I can avoid the UAC warnings in vista. Currently I see this... I am using visual studio to create the installer but the app was not written in .net. Do I need to sign both the .msi and the .exe contained in the .msi? What kind of key do I need and where should I get it?...
Most windows installers includes a recommendation that you "close all other applications before continuing". I can imagine this may have been necessary in old versions of windows. And it may be for a small number of installations now. But surely it isn't needed for most installs. Is it? I'm creating an installer for my own (pretty simpl...
Somehow we ended up with something going wrong with one of our recently deployed upgrades (internal deploy, only about a dozen machines or so) and there are now 2 entries for our program showing up in windows add/remove program and I'm trying to figure out what could have caused this. In a nutshell what does windows use to determine whe...
I have been running in to an issue where a COM dll that I am distributing with my application fails to register because the atl.dll is not registered on the machine. The quick fix is to have the run regsvr32 on the dll, but I want something a little cleaner then that. I don't have much experience with deployment and I was wondering if...
Howdy Internets: I put together a WiX 3.0 package, utilizing the DIFx extensions, with the intentions to install a Windows 7 Sensor (UMDF driver). During installation, DIFXAPP logged "No matching devices found in INF" and simply threw the driver into storage. I read I'm to populate my INF with an appropriate DriverPackageType, but a...
I am creating an installer that also needs to delete the Arial font (I am told Arial will be recreated from a cache if it gets deleted, and that's exactly what I want). Is there a way that I can do this in WiX or will I need to write a custom action? Update: Users of my installer will 90% of the time have a hacked version of Arial whic...
I have a vendor supplied MSI file, and we want to automate the install to a couple thousand pcs/servers. Unfortunately, we would like to install it to our default apps directory, which is not c:\program files. Is there a way to do this easily? I'm experimenting with Orca, but I'd rather get a solid method on how to do this quickly and e...
Hello! Is it possible to create MSI package, which will run without Windows installer installed in system, but first will install Windows installer itself, and then continue installing other components? The goal is to create prerequisite package for our software, which must install some components, including some operation system servic...
We have been using the CustomizeDlg from the wix UI extension library for the feature selection dialog box, but a new requirement has come up which states that the browse button should be disabled if the software is being updated. So I copied the dialog wxs file from the library in order to customize it, changed the code as follows <C...
When my software is installed, via an MSI, it creates some registry keys within HKLM. When people are using the software their individual preferences are saved to HKCU. When the software is uninstalled the HKLM and HKCU registry keys are deleted, but I'm thinking that it's only the HKCU keys for the user who is running the uninstall that...
I have a file that I need to copy, run a command against the copy that specializes it for the person downloading it, and then provide that copy to a user to download. I'm using ASP.Net MVC2, and I've never done anything like this. I've searched around for the simplest way to do it, but I haven't found much, so I've come up with a plan. ...
I need to modify an MSI file, and I'd like to do it in code. I can do it via command line using cscript.exe and wirunsql.vbs, but I can't figure out how to do it in .Net. I know it can be done, as I've found snippets of other people doing something, but they don't say what to include or where to get it. I have the Windows Platform SDK, b...
Our WiX script currently creates an event log source using the method described here. However, the log is created with default values for the Maximum log size and how it behaves when the log is full (e.g. Overwrite events as needed). Is there an easy way to change those values when creating the source? I'm guessing it would require cr...
I'd like to read an MSI file into a MemoryStream (or something similar), and modify it. What's the easiest way to do this, without corrupting the MSI? All I need to be able to do is modify the value of one of the properties in the MSI. I'd prefer something in .Net, but I'm open to other platforms. Update: Here's my working code, using...
We are required to give a user permissions to Start, Stop, and Query status of an installed service. In WiX 2.0, this xml would have worked: <ServiceInstall Id="ServiceInstaller" Type="ownProcess" Name="$(var.ServiceName)" DisplayName="$(var.ServiceName)" Description="Our service description" Start="demand" Account="LocalSy...
We have created customized installer using Visual studio 2008 installer and in BeforeInstall method we are calling a splash screen. The problem here is when we click on setup.exe to start the installation it takes almost 25 sec to show the splash screen. Can you please let me know if there is any way to reduce this time or any other alte...