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Thursday, July 24, 2008 11:20 PM

Why Windows Installer May Require so much Disk Space

Windows Installer is an engine for performing transactional installations. When installing a product for the fist time, most often few or no files to be installed are already present on the machine. But when upgrading or patching a product, most often
Posted by Heath Stewart | 2 Comments
Tuesday, April 01, 2008 3:02 PM

Windows Installer 4.5 Beta 2 Available

The Windows Installer team released Windows Installer 4.5 Beta 2 recently. While not a lot has visibly changed since the first beta for which I provided an overview , it's important to note that a new column was added to the CustomAction table since changes
Posted by Heath Stewart | 0 Comments
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 12:19 PM

Debugging Custom Actions: Leaked Handles

Debugging custom actions isn't exactly the easiest action to do; Windows Installer spawns separate processes - remoting servers - to run in-process custom actions. Any opportunity to diagnose issues without debugging can be helpful. For example, an issue
Posted by Heath Stewart | 3 Comments
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 12:42 AM

Different Packages are Required for Different Processor Architectures

A common question is how to create a Windows Installer package that installs 32-bit binaries on 32-bit platforms, and both 32- and 64-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms. If you're actually trying to install 64-bit binaries to appropriate directories and
Posted by Heath Stewart | 6 Comments
Thursday, October 25, 2007 5:37 PM

ResolveSource Requires Source

It might be tempting to schedule the ResolveSource action , but ResolveSource actually requires that the original installation source is available whenever it is called. If your installer package is authored correctly, source must only be resolve in cases
Posted by Heath Stewart | 4 Comments
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 3:10 AM

EXE Custom Actions are Bad

Windows Installer custom actions that launch executables (base custom action type msidbCustomActionTypeExe , 0x2) are typically bad and should be avoided. How are they bad? Let the Windows Installer team count the ways . During internal audits we question
Posted by Heath Stewart | 7 Comments
Monday, August 27, 2007 2:14 PM

What's New in Windows Installer 4.5: Overview

The What's New section of the Windows Installer 4.5 CHM available in the downloads section of the Windows Installer 4.5 Beta Connect site has technical details of new functionality and changes as usual, but now that we can talk about Windows Installer
Posted by Heath Stewart | 6 Comments
Thursday, July 12, 2007 6:49 PM

Installing to TARGETDIR

The TARGETDIR property , paired with the SourceDir property in the Directory table , determines the root directory into which all files are copied unless otherwise located. During an administrative installation when all files are extracted the TARGETDIR,
Posted by Heath Stewart | 2 Comments
Thursday, July 12, 2007 2:19 PM

Immediate Custom Actions Always Impersonate

Windows Installer is a client/server application. When you install a package using msiexec.exe - which is executed by default in response to shell verbs such as Install - or APIs like MsiInstallProduct the package is initially processed under the user's
Posted by Heath Stewart | 0 Comments
Thursday, May 31, 2007 8:47 PM

Windows Installer Errors 2738 and 2739 with Script Custom Actions

Windows Script custom actions should be avoided . They are difficult to debug, get blocked by virus scanners, and are far more susceptible to machine state than native custom actions. That is indicated by Windows Installer error messages 2738 and 2739,
Posted by Heath Stewart | 9 Comments
Friday, April 20, 2007 7:06 PM

Custom Action Guidelines

Rob Mensching, father of Windows Installer XML (WiX), blogs about why managed custom actions are a bad idea . Aaron Stebner follows up by saying (and has said before ): "Avoid custom actions entirely if at all possible. "Investigate the WiX build-in custom
Posted by Heath Stewart | 3 Comments
Thursday, December 21, 2006 12:12 PM

Installation Guidelines for User-editable Configuration

A common problem with installations is user-editable files and registry keys. Configuration of this nature is a problem for every installer technology, but here are some guidelines to help developers overcome problems like users' preferences being reset
Posted by Heath Stewart | 2 Comments
 
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