4 replies to this topic

[hughwphamill]

Hello All,

I have several custom actions in my UI sequence of a legacy install, these involve logging and writing to program files. I don't have scope to redesign my install fully, and it has to be provided to customers as a pure msi (no setup.exe). I'm wondering if there is any way of forcing the Elevate privilages dialog from the Application Information Service to be displayed at the beginning of the UI sequence, so that my MSI when launched directly will behave like an exe with elevated privilages? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks and Regards,
Hugh W.P. Hamill

Edited by hughwphamill, 08 January 2007 - 17:34.

[Stefan Krueger]

If changing your msi setuo isn't an option, the easiest workaround would be to send your customers a setup.exe that will launch the msi.

[hughwphamill]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your reply. Supplying a second file with my setup is not an option right now. I am wondering if there is a CA or MSI Property I can set which will force the UI Sequence to prompt for elevated privilages. I am working in ISWI2.03 and the msi (when double clicked) cannot unload the IS Kernell files to the OS. This causes the setup to fail immediately, after that there's a couple of CA's that write to HKLM and Program Files. I don't have the option of changing these locations as my setup is highly customised and designed for Sophisticated User deployment on (generally) Win2k3 Servers typically 1 or 2 per Organisation. They are not for use by standard desktop users. A request from one of our customers has come in to support Vista, and turning off UAC is not an option for them.

I know MS haven't provided direct support for pushing the UI Sequence into Elevated mode directly, but I'm hoping there's a hack out there. It seems pretty rediculous that they'll allow the UI sequence to execute with elevated privilages when the MSI is launched from a Setup.exe, but don't provide a method of forcing to to run with elevated privilages from within MSI itself. My simplest workaround is to create a shortcut to the msiexec /i xxx.msi and right click then Run-As-Administrator, which runs the UI in elevated mode. Surely there's a little hack which will get around that farcical extra step.

[hughwphamill]

Just to let everyone know, due to time constraints I have decided to recommend executing the MSI from the Administrative Command Prompt. This gets around the issue I was having. If anyone has any neater solutions I'd still be interested in hearing them.

Regards,
Hugh

[Stefan Krueger]