3 replies to this topic

[ebuljan]

I have been given two requirements for my otherwise simple msi project:

1 - No Add/Remove Programs entry
2 - The ability to rollback the install at a later time. Not an uninstall, but a rollback.

I'm using Wix to create the .msi.

Is this possible to accomplish without having to write a ton of custom code? I'd like to leverage the Windows Installer's built-in rollback mechanism, but in a situation where the install was succesful. It sounds like to do this I would have to:

1 - Supress the deletion of the temporary rollback directory (where is it?)
2 - Find a way to start the rollback procedure

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[Stefan Krueger]

1 - set the ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT property
2 - MSI is not designed to do this. I don't think it would work. And if it did it would break your machine if you installed some other software afterwards. Note that rollback will downgrade files, restore registry entries etc. If you need to rollback the system to a previous state, better create a disk image snapshot (using Norton Ghost or DriveImage or a similar software).

[_nick_]

By rollback what do you mean? Do you mean you would like to uninstall updates? I beleive with MSI 3.0 if you update via patching, you can specify if patches can be uninstalled (see PatchMetadata/@AllowRemoval). I haven't used this feature at all, but it should definately be available through the Add Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel (provided you have "Show Updates" checked). Also I don't think that you can suppress the use of a temp folder, but you can force it to be removed (see PatchCreation/@CleanWorkingFolder).

[ebuljan]