I got from my software vendor a batch file which compile some components together based on an wxs file (wix ?) with candle and light to create an outlook add-in installer.
Unfortunately, the msi setup file created only install for the current user.
Since I want to use the result on a terminal server and it should only be installed once by the administration, I think that I have to adapt the wxs file to allow the setup file to install for all users on the terminal server, right ?
I cannot find any hints on google or such, on how to adapt it.
Thanks for your help.
Change InstallScope of Package from perUser to perMachine as below
<Package InstallScope="perMachine" />
There will be other properties of course but this is the one important to you.
Also there can be other changes needed for changing installer from per user to per machine. For eg if there are registry keys you will probably need to change those from HKCU to HKLM.
Related
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.
We made some changes to the installation and updating process of our Windows app recently, and some users are now complaining that Windows sometimes automatically deletes the main application .exe file.
It usually occurs after users update app using built-in web update feature. The feature is implemented using .msi built in Advanced Installer tool.
We are struggling to figure out what is causing this, and haven't found a way to consistently reproduce the issue (though we've seen it happen as well).
Here's what changed with our installation and web updating process:
The main installer for our application is now a standard .msi, which becomes a part of the Windows installation system and is natively manageable by Group Policy and other system features, such as rollback or versions. In previous versions that did not have this problem, our installer was a .exe built with the SetupBuilder tool.
We introduced the redesigned web updater feature inside the app (to update to new versions within the app). It uses the same .msi as the main deliverable as for installation. .msi is downloaded from our server in a form of .exe which is then extracts MSI and starts it. MSI then updates file in our installation. These .exe and .msi is built with Advanced Installer tool which provides such a web update feature to developers. In previous versions that did not have this problem, our web update feature was developed with SetupBuilder tool which provided a custom web update files - .exe web updater that downloads a number of web update files containing patch to our app.
The goal of a transition to the standard .msi installer was to make it easy for our clients to deploy the app in organizations - say, mass deploy using group policies and other similar tools.
Has anyone else experienced a problem like this? Any ideas on how to troubleshoot and try to reproduce?
Theory: Before doing anything else: The first thing I would ask the people who report the problem is if they have re-packaged your older, legacy (non-MSI) setup to be their own MSI file? This can cause a well-known upgrade problem along the lines of what you explain (file missing). Please check first. Tell them to uninstall the existing version and then install the new one - that is the simplest way. Not always enough (some obscure problems possible).
Mismatched component GUIDs could cause missing files after upgrade, as could file version downgrade scenarios and various other technicalities. You could try to install to a new default location on disk to avoid these problems. The reason this can work is very technical and hard to explain tersely. Essentially you de-couple yourself from "the sins of the past". It is generally enough to change the name of the file in question: for example MyApp.exe to MyAppNew.exe or maybe add the major version: MyApp5.exe, but maybe try the folder change first ProgramFiles\MyCompany\MyApp => ProgramFiles\MyCompany\MyApp5.
How do you configure your upgrade? View "Upgrades", what is selected: "Uninstall old version first and then install new version" or "Install new version first and then uninstall old version".
Blog Entry:: Why Windows Installer removes files during a major upgrade if they go backwards in version numbers (might be of help).
Deployment Debugging: For open ended debugging of MSI and deployment problems in general one obviously needs to gather intel and that means logging and system inspection.
Logging: First try to get a proper log file for the systems where this problem occurs. In Advanced Installer you can tick the "Enable verbose logging" in the Install Parameters view to enable verbose logging for all package installations. This adds the MsiLogging property to the compiled MSI and every installation of the MSI will cause a MSI log file with a random name to be created in the TMP folder. View the folder, sort by date and the file should be at the top. Suggest you do this and then tell the users to send you the log files when relevant. Maybe you have this setting enabled already?
Further Logging: There are many ways to enable logging, and you can find a description here: Enable installation logs for MSI installer without any command line arguments. The MsiLogging property is just one possibility.
To log a single MSI setup: http://www.installsite.org/pages/en/msifaq/a/1022.htm.
To enable global logging for all MSI operations on the machine: Please see this FAQ-entry from installsite.org, section "Globally for all setups on a machine" - for the exact procedure.
How to interpret an MSI Log File.
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.
I want to make an MSI installer for my application and I also need to remotely deploy this application via active directory software deployment. I also need to make sure that this application is not installed multiple times and should not allow any repair or modification. To ensure this thing I have made ARPNOREPAIR=1 in my installer. This works fine if I try to install multiple instances manually or even silently. But I am facing problem when I am doing it using active directory. It always allow multiple installation which leads to a corrupt installation state. I want to is there any way I can make sure that multiple instances of the applications are not installed even if the versions are different.
Thanks
The easiest way to block all versions of a .msi package from being installed is to use the information provided by the UpgradeCode. You can find out if other versions of the related packages by adding the following (using WiX toolset syntax):
<Upgrade Id='PUT-UPGRADE-CODE-HERE'>
<UpgradeVersion OnlyDetect='yes' Property='FOUND_RELATED_PACAKGE' />
</Upgrade>
That will set a Property named FOUND_RELATED_PACKAGE to the list of ProductCodes from already installed packages. Then you could block the install like so (using WiX toolset syntax):
<Condition Message='Another version of [ProductName] is already installed.">
Installed OR NOT FOUND_RELATED_PACAKGE
</Condition>
Finally, it is very dangerous to block repair of an .msi package. There are many situations (including minor upgrade and patching) that depend on repair working for a package. It'd be much better to make your installation package resilient to repair since it is so fundamental to how things work.
Good luck!
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.