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[etippelt]

When you install an MSI, a locally cached copy ends up in c:\windows\installer, but it has what appears to be a hexadecimal name of 4-7chars with the msi file extension.

How is the hexadecimal name for this msi determined ?

Also, at what point in the InstallExecute sequence, is this locally cached msi actually written to disk?

Thanks
EdT

[Glytzhkof]

As far as I know this name is completely random. Here is what I have read: After the installation is invoked (one way or another), Windows Installer puts a copy of the MSI file with a random name in %USERPROFILE%Local Settings\Temp and then sets the value of the property called DATABASE to the name and location of the temp folder MSI file. Finally the MSI file is loaded into memory in the client process. When control is passed to the service process the database is cached in %SystemRoot%\Installer (in other words the database is apparently cached at the beginning of InstallExecute Sequence).