I have a VB6 Application that I am deploying using Microsoft Development Environment.
The install package is working for Windows 7/10 32/64 bit.
The problem I am having is if a second user logs into windows and runs the installed app some of the controls are not working.
Forms that contain MSCOMCT2.OCX, TABCTL32.OCX and maybe others fail saying:
"Component ... or one of is dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid"
But once again for the user that installed the app all is good.
I see in other installs there is a choice to install for only me or all users. I don't see a way to implement that in "Microsoft Development Environment", is this my problem?
What changes if you install an app for All users?
This may have to do with registry virtualization. The application may be running in some kind of compatibility mode so that the controls are not really being installed system-wide.
I'm not too familiar with those settings but it might be possible to adjust them so that the DLLs/OCX files are genuinely registered for all users and the application runs accordingly. There is a risk that if the compatibility settings were set intentionally, this could break something else.
Hopefully this is a useful starting point.
I will add that IMO installing the application not to require registration whatsoever is a much more robust solution. See How can you force VB6 to use the DLLs and OCXs from the app directory?
We are writing an installer for our Windows tool. As our tool uses an updater (wyUpdate) and we want that users WITHOUT Administator rights can performs updates. Which is the right directory to install the app to? The standard C:\Program Files requires Administrator rights, so we have discarded this option. After reading a bit on the Web, we have chosen AppData, i.e. C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local.
Is this best practice? Or should we use another directory?
If you do not want to allow your users to mess with the installed program, you have to install it to a folder that needs Administrator privileges.
To allow an automatic update of such application, you need to develop/install a service that runs with Administrator privileges, which will update the installation. This is what Windows Update, Mozilla Maintenance Service, Google Chrome Elevation Service, Adobe Acrobat Update Service and similar services do.
If you do not want to implement a service, but you want the application to be used by all users of the machine, you need to install it to a folder that can be accessed by all users, yet does not need Administrator privileges. You can for example use C:\Users\Public. See also Is there a shared folder in Windows to which non-elevated users have write access?. You can use PUBLIC environment variable to resolve that path.
If the application is to be used by one user only, then you are ok with using C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local – {userappdata} in Inno Setup.
Related question: Deploying application with .NET framework without admin privileges
I've just had to jump through hoops to get my application to install on Windows 8.1 and I'm concerned for my users. I'm testing the installer inside Parallels on my macbook.
First of all I had to disable SmartScreen as this just completely borked everything and wouldn't allow the installer to run at all. I'm not really happy to just tell my users to turn this off as that doesn't really make much sense.
After I jumped through that hoop Windows wouldn't allow my installer to access the C:\Program Files(x86)\ directory without administration rights. I have only one user on the machine that is in the administrators group and I was running the installer through that account.
There also wasn't a Run as Admin option in the context menu so I had to open a Command Prompt as Administrator and issue the following command:
net user administrator /active:yes
Then reboot the machine.
Since I'm a one man band operation making a free app I'm seriously short on beta testers and I can't justify getting an EV certificate to sign the installer with etc.
Seems making / distributing apps for Windows is getting harder and also trashing the user experience in the process.
What are the real options to make things better for my users?
The installer technology is WiX and I already set the following in the installer:
<Property Id="MSIUSEREALADMINDETECTION" Value="1" />
In the Product element I also already set the following:
InstallScope="perMachine"
InstallPrivileges="elevated"
I am trying to create an installer for a Internet Plugin on Mac OS X with PackageMaker. I'm not picky about the tool I use, but it needs to be free. It'd be nice if I could do everything I want with PackageMaker because CMake/CPack supports PackageMaker and the project (build with FireBreath) is built with CMake.
The problem I am running into is that I am only installing the plugin for the current user -- in ~/Library/Internet Plugins -- but the installer still insists on asking for the admin password! I have heard that you can turn this off as long as you don't need to target versions of Mac OS previous to 10.5, but I can't find any way to do this.
Am I missing something? Is there a different tool I should use? Any help would be appreciated!
The fact that your installer asks for admin password might be because of some actions you have in your installation process, for example if you have actions to kill web browsers.
When I built my first installers for my (also firebreath) plugin, installing inside the user's directory, it was not asking for admin password. After I added actions to stop Safari and Firebreath, then my installer started asking for admin password.
I just noticed that Chromium was installed in AppData in both Vista and XP. If Google does that and if other applications does this, than is that becuase there is some form of protection? Should we write installers that does the same thing as Google?
Windows still lacks a convention for per-user installation.
When an installer asks whether to install for the current user or all users, it really only refers to shortcut placement (Start Menu; Desktop). The actual application files still go in the system-wide %PROGRAMFILES%.
Microsoft's own ClickOnce works around this by creating a completely non-standard %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Apps (%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming on Vista / Server 2008) directory, with both program files and configuration data in there.
(I'm at a loss why Microsoft couldn't add a per-user Program Files directory in Vista. For example, in OS X, you can create a ~/Applications, and the Finder will give it an appropriate icon. Apps like CrossOver and Adobe AIR automatically use that, defaulting to per-user apps. Thus, no permissions issues.)
What you probably should do: if the user is not an admin, install in the user directory; if they do, give them both options.
One advantage nobody mentioned are silent auto-updates. Chrome has an updater process that runs all the time and immediately updates your chrome installation.
I think their use-case is non-standard. They need a way to fix vulnerability issues (since it's a browser) as soon as possible. Waiting for admins approving every single update company-wide, is simply not good enough.
As far as I can tell, the only reason why Chrome installs into the Application Data folder is so that non-admin users can install it.
The Chrome installer currently does not allow the user to pick where the application is to be installed. Don't do that – instead, give the user a choice between a per-user (somewhere like App Data) and computer-wide (Program Files) installation.
Windows 7 and Windows Installer 5.0 provide real per-user installation capabilities now.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd408068%28VS.85%29.aspx
You can sort of fudge it in Vista and XP by using ~/AppData/Local or the equivalent like Chrome does. Microsoft themselves use this for the ClickOnce installers.
So at least on Windows 7 and beyond the solution is simple.
Frankly, I have yet to see the first installer that really allows both per-user and per-machine installations. Many installers offer this option in their GUI, but the setting only affects where the shortcuts etc. go -- the binaries always fo to %ProgramFiles%.
In fact, it is pretty hard to create Windows Installer packages that allow both kinds of installs, to say the least. With the advent of UAC, I'd say its is impossible: Per user installations must not require elevation, per machine installations have to. But whether an MSI package requires elevation is controlled via a bit in the summary information stream -- there is no way to have user input have impact on that.
Whether per-user or per-machine is the better choice greatly deoends on the application. For small packages, however, I tend to prefer per-user installations. Besides being slightly more user-friendly by not requiring an UAC prompt or runas, they also signalize the user that the setup will not do much harm to the computer (assuming he is a non-admin).
The Chrome installer really ought to allow global installation (with elevation) in addition to per-user. I don't want to have to maintain an installation for every user; I want to be able to centrally manage upgrades and so on. Chrome doesn't allow that.
That said, the option to install per-user is quite nice, as it means no permissions issues.
Just so you people know, Google has created an MSI installer for global system installation and management. It's located here:
https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/browser/
I do not see anything in %PROGRAMFILES% on Win7. Looks like Chrome must be installed for each user on the machine.
Perhaps the true reason of doing this is faking number of Chrome installations by few times ! Thus making it first browser in the world !