Windows Installer Team Blog : PDC2005

Authoring to Windows Installer 4.0 Features mentioned at PDC 2005

Windows Installer Team — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 08:40:00 GMT

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.)

Dialog_	Control	Type	X	Y	Width	Height	Attributes	Property	Text	Control_Next
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

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

Property	Value
ShutdownOption	ShutdownOption1

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.

[Author: Robert Flaming]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.

PDC Content Available!

Windows Installer Team — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 04:18:00 GMT

Hello everyone,

Just a note that all of the PDC content is now available for download. If you missed the Windows Installer / ClickOnce session at the PDC (FUN222) now is a great opportunity to get caught up! Check out this blog posting for more information.

[Author: Tyler Robinson]

Best Practice Guidelines for Building Quality Installs: Part 1, the Basics

Windows Installer Team — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 07:16:00 GMT

This is the first in a series of Best Practice Guidelines for Building Quality Installs . Let's start with the basics of quality Windows Installer (MSI) package. Prior postings the series: Introduction.

Build Components According to Component Rules

To ensure that the installation or removal of one program does not harm any other programs on the system and that the Windows Installer service correctly removes all resources connected with that program, your application installation package must adhere to the component rules.

All Components have a proper ComponentId GUIDs

Though the Component table’s ComponentId field is a nullable, the consequences for not providing a ComponentId is that the component is not uninstallable or manageable via the Windows Installer APIs.

Testability: scan Component table and for any row, confirm there is a component GUID in the ComponentID column.

All COM Servers must be a KeyPath of a Component

Do not include more than one COM server per component (per Organizing Applications into Components). If a component contains a COM server, this must be the KeyPath for the component.

Testability: scan file table and media for com servers. For any com server found, make sure it’s the KeyPath for a component.

No more than one target of Start menu or Desktop shortcut

Do not specify more than one file per component as a target for the Start menu or a Desktop shortcut (per Organizing Applications into Components).

Testability: scan shortcut and directory tables for Start menu or a Desktop shortcut targets. Make sure no component has more than one Start menu or a Desktop shortcut target.

Pass MSI Validation Testing

Any error from the Internal Consistency Evaluators validation suite must be fixed. Warnings represent design guidance to the package author which should be studied for applicability. If warnings do not apply or will not be fixed, they must be added to the Vendor Questionnaire to inform testing automation and customers.

Customer Impact: Highly desired by corporate customers.

Testability: boot Orca on MSI file , click Tools | Validate, in Validaiton Output dialog uncheck the Show "INFO" Messages click Go, run without errors, document any warnings

Uninstallation

Your application’s package must correctly and fully uninstall the application. A pure MSI package does this automatically. If your package includes custom actions, you may need to proactively ensure that your application properly uninstalls with an uninstall custom action.

Customer Impact: Highly desired by corporate and retail customers.

Testability: snap system before install and after uninstall and any thing remaining on the system should be listed in the vendor questionnaire.

[Author: Robert Flaming]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.

Best Practice Guidelines for Building Quality Installs: Part 0, the Introduction

Windows Installer Team — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 06:56:00 GMT

With the start of the Profesional Developers Conference 2005, the Windows Installer Team is starting a series of Best Practice Guidelines for Building Quality Installs. Windows Installer (MSI) is a rich engine with many features to solve installation problems including an extensibility feature called custom actions. Given all the freedom provided when composing packages, package producers and consumers both need a reference with guidelines for quality packages.

Customer Value: Some package producers report getting lost in the Windows Installer (MSI) feature set and ask for guidance to do the right thing while saving time. Some package consumers report back to us the common problem they find they are provided and ask us for help in getting the package producers to do the right thing.

Testability: How do package producers and consumers arrive at the same interpretation of a best practice? With each Best Practice we'll include a testability component to provide neutral guidance on whether a package conforms.

Complementary Infrastructure: For the sake of the exercise, we're assuming there is both a declaration file called a Vendor Questionnaire that is provided by the package provider and a report file called a Compliance Report that is provided by the package consumer. We're also assuming one has a tool that snapshots the system and can difference two snapshots.

Quality Accountability Model: It is expected that a package provider would declare any variation from a best practice in the Vendor Questionnaire. It is expected that a package consumer would report any variation from a best practice in the Compliance Report. With this transparency, the consumer if fully informed as to the qualities of the software one is considering consuming and if either the declared qualities or declarations are missing, a fair upfront discussion can occur between provider and consumer.

We welcome your feedback. Please let us know if there are areas you are particularly interested in.

[Author: Robert Flaming]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.

How do I get a deep view of what Windows Installer is doing?

Windows Installer Team — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 09:00:00 GMT

Question

How do I get a deep view of what Windows Installer is doing?

Answer

One of the comments I got from the PDC was that the SDK documentation and commercial tools lacked sufficient depth if one really wanted to figure out what was going on. Verbose logging helps but what's happening in between log lines. In the course of day to day operations, hem offered the following

let us see if the following steps help in narrowing down the API calls and the time spent in each of those API:

Enable MSI Debug logging via policy.
Run DebugMon.exe while you make MSI API calls
Collect the logs for the fast and slow response scenarios in separate Debug logs. Share the debug spew.
Turn off MSI logging policy to ensure that system performance is not hindered due to logging.

How do I set MSI Debug Logging?

Add the following values under the key:


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer

"Debug"=dword:00000007

"Logging"="voicewarmupX"

net stop msiserver
Kill any remaining instances of msiexec.
net start msiserver
Restart the application which needs to be investigated.
Repro the Scenario and collect debugger logs from debugmon.exe.
After that, remove the registry entries added in step 1 and redo steps 2 and 3, otherwise Windows Installer will keep spewing out a lot of debug output which will make it really slow.

Most of our API, when this policy is set, spew to debugger the parameters and return values. However, there are some API that don’t log this info. In some instances, getting that partial info itself could be fairly useful.

Content credit also belongs to

Hemchander Sannidhanam, MSI Team Dev. You can get other Hem insights about developing for Windows Installer from the Windows Installer Chat Archives

[Author: Robert Flaming]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.

How do I find all the Windows Installer packages installed on my machine?

Windows Installer Team — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 02:00:00 GMT

Question

How do I find all the Windows Installer packages installed on my machine?

Answer

Here’s the APIs and the Properties one would need

MsiEnumProducts(DWORD,LPTSTR) function [Windows Installer]
MsiEnumProductsEx (8 Parameters) function [Windows Installer]

ProductCode Property

MsiGetProductInfoEx (6 Parameters) function [Windows Installer]
MsiGetProductInfo(LPCTSTR,LPCTSTR,LPTSTR,DWORD) function [Windows Installer]

UpgradeCode property [Windows Installer]

If one were interested in finding the installation location, use

MsiSourceListGetInfo (7 Parameters) function [Windows Installer]
MsiSourceListEnumSources (7 Parameters) function [Windows Installer]
MsiSourceListEnumMediaDisks (10 Parameters) function [Windows Installer]

What would be really cool is to migrate the feature states as well with

MsiQueryFeatureState(LPCTSTR,LPCTSTR) function [Windows Installer]
MsiQueryFeatureStateEx (5 Parameters) function [Windows Installer]

To populate the preselected properties

ADDSOURCE property [Windows Installer]
ADVERTISE property [Windows Installer]
ADDLOCAL property [Windows Installer]

[Author: Robert Flaming]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.

Catch our session at Microsoft PDC 2005!

Windows Installer Team — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone,

Just a reminder that Tyler Robinson and Jamie Cool will be speaking about software installation on Windows Vista and what cool new features we have in store for the next release of the Windows Installer here at the PDC.

FUN222 - What's New in Software Installation on Windows Vista: Exploring the Windows Installer (MSI) and ClickOnce Options.
Friday, September 16th @ 1:00 PM
Room 406AB

If you are at the PDC, I hope to see you there. And don't forget that Robert and I can be found in the Fundamentals Lounge all day today and tomorrow.

- Tyler

Live from PDC 2005! No power, no problem ;^)

Windows Installer Team — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 01:52:00 GMT

Rob and I had an uneventful Alaska Air flight from SeaTac to LAX. We've picked up car from Avis (well, a minivan) and then were off to the Biltmore. Dropped our bags, walked a dozen L.A. blocks to the Conference Center and grabbed a quick lunch.

As we were finishing up, pow, the lights went out. Inside the conference center, first there was cheering and clapping. Yep, we're geeks. The emergency lights came on and the room had a nice soothing ambiance. With the ceiling decorations featuring Office 12 branding it kind of felt like a Microsoft prom (a geek prom). A couple of hours of darkness and there was light. Then we come to find out that it as a blockout for a good part of L.A.

We're now hanging out at the Lounge now. Wireless is miserable (but better than teched 05) so we're using the hard lines.

Got to go make sure our hands on lab works. Will checkin a bit later.

[Author: Robert Flaming]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.
keywords: pdc 05 pdc05 pdc2005

Tyler and Robert on their way to PDC 2005

Windows Installer Team — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 04:54:00 GMT

Los Angeles here we come!

Tyler's speaking at FUN222 - Windows Vista: What’s New in Software Installation for Windows Vista: Exploring the Windows Installer (MSI) and ClickOnce Options in room 406 AB on Friday the 16th at 1pm.

Robert's signed up to co-own the Fundamentals Track Lounge where: speakers are our SWAG. We've got an average of 20 experts covering the lounge at any one time..

Stop on by and say hi!

PDC2005 PDC05 PDC 05