5 replies to this topic

[travis]

What is the registry entry that tells me what verison (if any) of the windows installer is installed? Or is there a way to do it with out checking the registry.  
I am writing an app that needs to know what version is there.

[Leigh Ravenhall]

Programatically, its available as the Version property of the Installer object.  If you aren't checking programatically, I'm not sure where it is, but there must be a property somewhere.

[SteveP]

You can access the version number of the product from either the msi.dll or the msiexec.exe file in the System32 folder.  We use an API call to return the version string and then parse out the portion that we need for the version check.

[Irina]

You can check reg key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\[{ProductCodeWindowsInstaller}].  [{ProductCodeWindowsInstaller}] looks like
{9C6AB514-F3F6-4B6F-9E2D-D5DE52A07179}. You can check all existing subkey in this key and find with Windows installer. Value of DisplayName should be InstallShieldProfessional - Windows Installer Edition or slightly different. After this see values Version,  VersionMajor, VersionMinor.

[SteveP]

Irina,

The key you mention is probably for ISWI.  Since Windows Installer is not used to install Windows Installer, it does not have the same kind of product code in the Uninstall area.  

For those of use that don't use a third party install packager, checking the file versions is the best way to know the version of Windows Installer we are using.