Add Administrator/UAC icon/sign to Inno Setup installer icon - windows

I installed an application that only extracted the files without being really installed to the system so I created my own setup.exe. Now I wonder why there is no Admin sign in front of the .exe.
This is what i get:
and this is what normally a Setup installer looks like:
I can't find the needed code on the Inno Setup website.
I hope you can help me out what code I would have to add. (Yes I know I could just make another icon just for the setup but just adding some code would be much nicer. InstallForge does it automatically but Inno Setup just has better options for registry entries)
Best Regards,
Christian

Windows looks at the application manifest to determine if the executable requires UAC elevation.
Set the requestedExecutionLevel node in the manifest to requireAdministrator.
In Inno Setup you can set PrivilegesRequired to admin but that is already the default and it will not add the shield to current versions of Inno as far as I know.
If your installer is not signed you could perhaps use Resource Hacker to add/edit the manifest yourself.

Related

Inno Setup : how to integrate admin credentials in the installer

I want to create an installer that:
- install a software package
- copy a host file in the user system
without any user installation except launching the installer.
I need this installer to run as admin but I do not want to disclose the admin login/password to users but instead I want to embed it in the installer itself. How can I insert the admin credentials within the installers, please ? Is it even possible ?
I've looked into the forums but did not find what I'm trying to do.
Thank you for your help and support,
Fred
You basically need this:
Make Inno Setup installer request privileges elevation only when needed
(the old code in the second part of my answer with an explicit code for the elevation for Inno Setup 5)
Except that instead of simply re-running the installer with runas verb (which needs entering the Administrator credentials manually), you need this:
Inno Setup run/execute code as another user

WiX Toolset: File extensions registering asking for feature install on different user

I am having trouble with my WiX installation in that I am registering a file extension but because you have to tie every component to a feature, I can't get the feature to install to "All Users"?
Specifically what is happening is I install the MSI under an admin account. The MSI is not located in a shared location that is accessible by all users. The extension appears to register for the other users however when other users click on the file (with the newly registered extension) to open it, it tries to look for the original MSI first to install a feature. If the MSI is found it will open the installed application like normal, otherwise it errors. For the admin account that installed the MSI, it does not ask to install the feature from the MSI (even if I delete the MSI before clicking on a file with that extension)
I have set the installlevel of all the features to "1" and set the TypicalDefault to "install" and InstallDefault to "local". The package is also set to install at the machine level.
Is there something else that needs to be set?
See if this helps: Troubleshooting unwanted self-repairs using the Event Viewer
Basically you need to understand why the repair is happening (which component key path ) and then remediate it. Alternatively you could wrap your MSI with a EXE (WiX Burn) and cache the MSI in a location that users can access if the repair is truly needed.

How to make the setup.exe from a VS2010 Setup Project ask for Admin Privileges?

I have a problem which I guessed would be really simple to solve... but duh.
I'm deploying a .NET application with VS2010. I have a C# Windows Forms project and a Deployment Project. I need the installer to run with admin privileges because the app is installed for all users and an entry to the registry is made.
When starting the setup.exe I'm not prompted for privilege elevation. The installer will just start and suggest to install to Program Files (x86) which is good. After clicking next the installer runs and finished with a success message. Which is basically a lie because it did not successfully install. Instead it puts the apps exe directly to C:\.
How can I make the installer ask for admin privileges. Or do I have to rely on my customer to right click the setup and select "Run as Admin" which is very error prone?
Clarifications about my setup:
In the File System view of the setup project I added (among other things) "Primary Output from project01 (Active)" and "Build Outputs from project01 (Active) to "Application Folder". I also added a shortcut to "Primary Output" into "User's Programs Menu\CompanyName\ProgramName".
In the Registry View I added an entry to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT because I need to register an url handler.
I also modified the setup's settings: I set InstallAllUsers to True because it is supposed to do so.
When I build and start the setup.exe by double clicking (or by selecting Install from the project's context menu) I always get the same result: The installer runs without asking for admin privileges, ask for an install location (which I leave at the default C:\Program Files(x86)\Company\ProgramName) and then procedes after clicking Next. As a result, the exe is put directly in C:\ and the shortcut created of course points into Nirvana.
If I run the setup.exe manually as Administrator things work fine. But this cannot seriously be the way to go.
So how can I tell the setup to always run as Admin?
I think this is a perfectly valid question, is a real problem, and has an actual explanation.
I recently ran across this problem. In my case, the cause is that the AlwaysInstallElevated policy was set on the computer through GPO. The policy was set to 1 in the per-machine policy and 0 in the per-user policy. These policies can be manually set to reproduce the effect it has on MSI installers
Using msexec /log install.log /i Deploy.msi, I had a setup log and there were strings in it like this:
MSI (s) (A4:8C) [13:00:42:885]: Ignoring disallowed property TARGETDIR
MSI (s) (A4:8C) [13:00:42:885]: Ignoring disallowed property VSDNETURLMSG
MSI (s) (A4:8C) [13:00:42:885]: Ignoring disallowed property VSDNETMSG
It seems that Visual Studio does not set the SecureCustomProperties in the MSI correctly and post processing of some sort is needed. I think that moving to WiX may be a better long term solution instead.
A blog post on MSDN is what I found that helped me find the root cause to this problem.
I've come across the same issue as you, and have found a good enough solution for it. So it might work for you too. The solution is documented here:
VS2010 Setup Project - Run As Administrator
I will re-iterate the solution briefly here. Basically, you need to manually edit the setup project file (.vdproj) and the following property to TRUE:
"MsiBootstrapper"
{
...
"RequiresElevation" = "11:TRUE"
}
When starting the setup.exe I'm not prompted for privilege elevation.
This is the normal behavior. The boostrapper doesn't need elevation.
Which is basically a lie because it did not successfully install.
Instead it puts the apps exe directly to C:.
So it did install your application, but in the wrong location. This is not related to elevation. In the File System editor in your setup project where did you add your application files? Did you add them in "Application Folder"?
How can I make the installer ask for admin privileges.
A MSI package installed for all users automatically prompts for elevation when clicking Install button. If it doesn't elevate automatically and installs in a per-machine location (like C:), the installation fails and nothing is copied on the target machine.

Run another installer in an Inno Setup installation

My company is developing an application that has a dependency on another of our applications. That second application already has an Inno Setup installer.
So I think I'd like to bundle the second application's installer within the Inno Setup installer for the first application. But I'm not sure how to go about that properly. Does anyone know the "right way" to do this?
I found this: Inno Setup Knowledge Base—HOWTO: Install .MSI files. I assume the technique could be used for a nested Inno Setup installer. But I have a couple of questions about the fine details:
How could I make it so if the first application is uninstalled, the second is also uninstalled?
Is that a sensible thing to do (automatically uninstall the second application), or should I leave it to the user to do that manually?
If the user tries to uninstall the second application while the first is uninstalled, should I somehow detect that and give a warning? How could I do that?
For the level of uninstaller functionality you are talking about, I suggest you get familiar with pascal scripting in Inno Setup (if you are not already). It offers incredible customisation, but has the caveat of making your projects a lot more complex.
To answer your third question first:
Yes, you should do this. In order to do it properly, you need to add this functionality to the uninstaller of the second application (i.e. the one your app is dependent on). See Uninstall event functions in the Inno Setup help. You need to check in that uninstaller if your app is installed (by checking if HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\SecondAppName exists, for example) and in that case show an additional warning.
As for your second question:
If it is remotely possible that your customer wants to continue using the second app, even if he decides that he wants to uninstall the first one, you should offer him the choice. I would do this with a seperate wizard page in the uninstaller for your app, after your app is uninstalled.
And finally, your first question:
You need to determine the name (full path) of the other app's uninstaller exe. You can retrieve it from the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\SecondAppName\UninstallString. For executing it from a script in the [CODE] section, see Exec in the Inno Setup help.

MSI Bootstrapping: External URLs

Much searching has lead me to find several descriptions of how to create a bootstrapping msi, but these solutions all assume the msi is local or a standard Windows component. Is there a way to make an msi that downloads an installer (which is also an msi) with normal MSI or Wix code rather than by having the bootstrapper execute some non-native program to do so?
My experience with msi's has been it's not possible to run 2 at the same time. (could be wrong though)
What I ended up doing was to instead make an installer exe using Inno Setup (http://www.jrsoftware.org) and ISTool (http://www.istool.org) which downloads and installs the various msi's. With ISTool it's very easy to do.
I know it's not as chic or sexy as Wix, but it worked for me very well.
I would create a custom action that runs in the InstallUISequence. This would download the MSI if necessary (to the source folder), and then try to launch it as a nested installation.
Windows prevents two installs from being in the InstallExecuteSequence at the same time, so if you're looking for a silent install solution with a bootstrapper, you're SOL.
However you can start another install from the UI sequence, which is probably an OK solution as long as you advise your customers that certain other dependencies must be installed first if they're going to deploy via group policy or some other 'silent' method.
If it helps, I'm pretty sure you can also call MSIEXEC with a URL, eg. msiexec.exe /i http://some.domain/blah.msi /passive
I would suggest that you write a native app and have it run the first msi and then run the seccons msi. I wrote a blog on how to do this. Here is a link (http://blog.foldertrack.com/?p=45)

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