Windows Installer Team Blog

Authoring to Windows Installer 4.0 Features mentioned at PDC 2005

As Tyler recently mentioned, you can find the Professional Developers Conference 2005 session and presentation of the Windows Installer 4.0. Here's a preliminary view of how to author to these features. Note: This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.

Restart Manager Support

As Tyler presented in the slide titled "Windows Installer 4.0: Fewer Reboots", Restart Manager support in MSI just requires MsiRMFilesInUse be present in the package when installing on Windows Vista. This dialog looks a lot like the FilesInUse dialog with a couple of radio buttons added under the list box to represent the new Restart Manager Option along with the fallback option to the old behavior.

Control Table

Dialog_	Control	Type	X	Y	Width	Height	Attributes	Property	Text	Control_Next	Help
MsiRMFilesInUse	DlgLine	Line	0	234	294	0	1
MsiRMFilesInUse	Banner	Bitmap	0	0	374	44	1		NewBinary1
MsiRMFilesInUse	DlgDesc	Text	21	23	292	25	65539		Some files that need to be updated are currently in use.
MsiRMFilesInUse	DlgTitle	Text	13	6	292	25	65539		{&MSSansBold8}Files in Use
MsiRMFilesInUse	DlgText	Text	21	49	348	17	3		The following applications are using files that need to be updated by this setup.
MsiRMFilesInUse	BannerLine	Line	0	44	374	0	1
MsiRMFilesInUse	RadioButtonGroup1	RadioButtonGroup	19	187	343	40	16777219	ShutdownOption		List
MsiRMFilesInUse	List	ListBox	21	66	331	118	7	FileInUseProcess		OK
MsiRMFilesInUse	OK	PushButton	228	244	66	17	3		OK	Cancel
MsiRMFilesInUse	Cancel	PushButton	299	244	66	17	3		Cancel	RadioButtonGroup1

ControlEvent Table

Dialog_	Control_	Event	Argument	Condition	Ordering
MsiRMFilesInUse	OK	EndDialog	Return	1	1
MsiRMFilesInUse	OK	RMShutdownAndRestart	0	ShutdownOption="ShutdownOption1"	2
MsiRMFilesInUse	Cancel	EndDialog	Exit	1	1

Dialog Table

Dialog	HCentering	VCentering	Width	Height	Attributes	Title	Control_First	Control_Default	Control_Cancel
MsiRMFilesInUse	50	50	374	266	19	[ProductName]	OK	OK	Cancel

Property Table

Property	Value
ShutdownOption	ShutdownOption1

RadioButton Table

Property	Order	Value	x	Y	Width	Height	Text	Help
ShutdownOption	1	1	6	9	331	14	Automatically close all applications and attempt to restart them after setup is complete.
ShutdownOption	2	2	6	21	322	17	Do not close applications. (A reboot will be required.)

Elevation Privleges Not Required

As Tyler presented in the slide titled "What's new in MSI: UAP Elevation and Installs and Patches", you can set the msidbSumInfoSourceTypeLUAPackage bit in the Summary Information Stream of a MSI and prevent the Windows Installer from invoking the UAP elevation prompt. To do this, one just needs to set the 4th position (0x08) in the Word Count property. You can do this with the Windows Installer SDK tool msiinfo.exe. As an example, here's the command and output before setting the bit

c:\>msiinfo product.msi

ClassId = {000C1084-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
[ 1][/c] Codepage = 1252
[ 2][/t] Title = Installation Database
[ 3][/j] Subject = Testing
[ 4][/a] Author = Microsoft Corp.
[ 5][/k] Keywords = Installer,MSI,Database
[ 6][/o] Comments = Contact:  Your local administrator
[ 7][/p] Template(MSI CPU,LangIDs) = Intel;1033
[ 9][/v] Revision = {62B8B42B-9D2E-49C2-A791-C90F212940B8}
[12][/r] Created = 2005/10/25 23:00:48
[13][/q] LastSaved = 2005/10/25 23:00:48
[14][/g] Pages(MSI Version Used) = 200
[15][/w] Words(MSI Source Type) = 0
<snip>

Then one runs msiinfo with the /W switch to set the Word Count property like so

c:\msiinfo product.msi /W 8

Then rerun the view to confirm the setting took like so

c:\>msiinfo product.msi

ClassId = {000C1084-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
[ 1][/c] Codepage = 1252
[ 2][/t] Title = Installation Database
[ 3][/j] Subject = Testing
[ 4][/a] Author = Microsoft Corp.
[ 5][/k] Keywords = Installer,MSI,Database
[ 6][/o] Comments = Contact:  Your local administrator
[ 7][/p] Template(MSI CPU,LangIDs) = Intel;1033
[ 9][/v] Revision = {62B8B42B-9D2E-49C2-A791-C90F212940B8}
[12][/r] Created = 2005/10/25 23:00:48
[13][/q] LastSaved = 2005/10/25 23:00:48
[14][/g] Pages(MSI Version Used) = 200
[15][/w] Words(MSI Source Type) = 8
<snip>

Windows Vista Multilingual User Interface (MUI) Shortcut Support

As Tyler presented in the slide titled "What's new in MSI: More...", you can now add Windows Vista Multilingual User Interface (MUI) Shortcut support to your MSI. The way you do this is to add for new columns to the Shortcut Table of your MSI. These are rows DisplayResourceDLL, DisplayResourceId, DescriptionResourceDLL, DescriptionResourceId placed as follows:

Column	Type	Key	Nullable
Shortcut	Identifier	Y	N
Directory_	Identifier		N
Name	Filename		N
Component_	Identifier		N
Target	Shortcut		N
Arguments	Formatted		Y
Description	Text		Y
Hotkey	Integer		Y
Icon_	Identifier		Y
IconIndex	Integer		Y
ShowCmd	Integer		Y
WkDir	Identifier		Y
DisplayResourceDLL	Formatted		Y
DisplayResourceId	Integer		Y
DescriptionResourceDLL	Formatted		Y
DescriptionResourceId	Integer		Y

Both the DisplayResourceDLL and DescriptionResourceDLL values represent fully qualified paths to files on disk that the MUI system will load (per the Windows Vista protocol) to get the localized strings. Both the DisplayResourceDId and DescriptionResourceId represent the resource index of the string of interest. This integer is non-negative and will be negated before the call to the Shell API to reguster the MUI shortcuts.