For some reason, we are delivering a product with our own install GUI, that means, we will run the msi installation silently background.
By using the MSI API "MsiInstallProduct", I can install the product silently, but I have no idea how can I get the progress data of this installation and how can I cancel it.
Anyone has some ideas?
I believe you can get the progress via the MSI API, but if I were you I would just show the progress bar from the MSI itself after invoking the install via msiexec.exe.
MSI supports several different installation levels (full, completely silent, basic GUI, reduced GUI etc...). In your case it sounds like you want a basic UI. This yields a progress bar where you can hide the cancel button, and optionally show a completion modal dialog:
Install silently with progress bar, no cancel button and no modal dialog at end:
msiexec.exe /I "Test.msi" /QB-!
To avoid having to construct these silly msiexec command lines manually, use the msi command line builder tool from Wise: http://www2.wise.com/filelib/WICLB.exe
You need to specify an external UI handler using MsiSetExternalUI or MsiSetExternalUIRecord before MsiInstallProduct (the latter is nicer, but has a higher MSI version requirement). The function you specify will be called for each message Windows Installer wants you to process. This will give you the data, and a chance to respond tell it to cancel. If you require MSI 4.5 or later, you can use an embedded external UI handler DLL, which does not require a bootstrap.
Here is a sample project that appears to do what you are referring to: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/msiinterop.aspx
May be you can try using Nvn Installer. It interacts with Windows Installer and gives progress messages, progress bar value etc during installation. It also provides lot of other features like getting list of features, its cost in KBytes, whether that feature is currently installer and lot more. I hope this helps !