The Dangers of RunOnce and Run Registry Keys

re: The Dangers of RunOnce and Run Registry Keys

Heath Stewart — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:50:57 GMT

@Kiran, if you really need to run an EXE at the end - and really think about whether you need to since setup is about copying bits and anything more complicates repairs, servicing, and other scenarios - you might consider writing a type 1 CA that will CreateProcess() after reading in the current environment block (there various APIs and other ways of getting it).

re: The Dangers of RunOnce and Run Registry Keys

Kiran Hegde — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:14:00 GMT

Hello,

I am now facing an issue which i believe is very commonly encountered.

I need to launch an EXE at the end of the installation. I can use a custom action of type 19 to do it.

However, i just realized that the EXE depends upon the PATH environmental variable which is updated by the installer. Since the environment variable was not available when the msiexec process started, this environment variable is not available for use to the EXE.

To overcome this, we have the following options:

i)Run the exe after a reboot by making use of RunOnce keys

The user has to reboot the sytem after an install.

By creating an entry for this EXE in RunOnce, this exe will run upon a user logon sucessfully as the environment variables would be available to it.

Question: Is using RunOnce a recommended procedure to accomplish this?

ii)Make use of a vbscript custom action to launch the EXE.

iii)Broadcast a message to windows when the environment variable is updated

What is the recommended solution here?

Is RunOnce used by msi installers frequently?

Thanks,

Kiran Hegde

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