InstallSite Blog : MSI 5

Service Pack 1 for InstallShield 2010 brings support for the final released versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

stefan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:17:02 GMT

When InstallShield 2010 was released, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were still in the Release Candidate (RC) state. Acresso now published Service Pack 1 to support the release versions (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and the included MSI 5 engine. SP1 also includes some enhancements for Windows Mobile installations and for Microsoft's App-V application virtualization.

Caveat: SP1 adds additional tables to the project file. When you open a project file in InstallShield 2010 SP1 it will be converted to the new format. Thereafter it can no longer be opened in InstallShield 2010 without SP1. So if you are working in a team, make sure that all users install SP1 simultaneously.

The stand-alone build engine has also been updated and can be downloaded as a full install package (not a patch).

Enhancements in SP1 related to Windows Installer 5 and Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 include:

Improved manifest for setup.exe to avoid triggering the program compatibility assistant on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
New options for Windows Services
Setting shell properties for shortcuts
Windows 7 Logo validation

Enhanced support for Microsoft App-V (requires Virtualization Pack):

Create App-V package upgrades
Compress App-V packages

Enhancements related to Windows Mobile 6.5:

Specify a 90x90 .png shortcut Icon for the Start Screen on Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional, which is a requirement for the Windows Marketplace for Mobile

SP1 also includes a number of bug fixes.

For detailed information see the release notes:

To download SP1 select Check for Updates from the Tools menu in InstallShield. See also knowledge base article Q206429

New Advanced Installer 7.2 brings desktop ActiveSync installers for Windows Mobile applications

stefan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:56:01 GMT

On September 8th, 2009 Caphyon Ltd. announced the latest edition of its Windows Installer authoring tool. This is the fifth feature update in this year. Since each Advanced Installer purchase includes 6 months of maintenance (optionally 30 months) you get an average of three free updates.

New and improved features in Advanced Installer 7.2 include:

Install Windows Mobile applications from the desktop through ActiveSync
Transforms Wizard to create MST transforms capturing user input during an install or the differences between two Windows Installer MSI databases
Fast installs through Windows Installer 5.0
Retrieve WiX imported files from Visual Studio project
Ability to digitally sign using information from the certificates store
Ability to customize the installation folder for each feature
Mixed 32-bit/64-bit package predefined project template
Visual C++ application predefined project template
.NET Framework application predefined project template
Copy/Paste support for dialog editor, launch conditions, Prerequisites, upgrades and searches
Command line options for: Windows Mobile projects, patch images, adding and removing merge modules in a MSI project, setting merge module signature information, ProductCode
Windows Powershell 1.0 predefined prerequisite
Adobe Flash Player 10 predefined prerequisite
XNA Framework 3.1 predefined prerequisite and launch condition
SQL Server Express and SQL Server Compact launch conditions

Advanced Installer is licensed on a per developer basis, allowing named users to install the software on up to five machines. It is available in four editions, starting with the Freeware community edition and offering a 30-day trial period for the other editions.

For more information about Advanced Installer please see:
www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

Careful with that Hyperlink (on your MSI dialog)

stefan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:51:16 GMT

One of the new features in version 5 of the Windows Installer runtime is support for hyperlink controls on setup dialogs. Remember that MSI 5 is only available on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but there's no redistributable for down-level platforms.

In most cases when introducing new features, the MSI team made sure they don't break your setup on older runtime versions. For instance, older MSI versions simply ignore new tables that they can't use. This enables developers to create a setup that will run with basic functionality on older platforms but on the latest MSI version the new features would "light up".

The hyperlink control is different, maybe because it's not a table but a new control type in an existing table, the Control table. Thus, it causes your setup to fail on Windows Installer versions prior to MSI 5:

Dialog with hyperlink control on Windows 7

Dialog with hyperlink control on Windows Vista

Error code 2885 means "Failed to create the control [3] on the dialog [2]."

Workaround

To work around this issue, create two versions of the dialog, one with the hyperlink control, and the other without. Use these condition to display the appropriate dialog:

VersionMsi >= "5.00" (for the dialog with hyperlink control)
VersionMsi < "5.00" (for the dialog without hyperlink control)

Note that making the hyperlink control invisible for MSI versions < 5 doesn't help. You really need a separate dialog.

How to create a hyperlink control (if your tool doesn't support it)

I've used Advanced Installer to create the above screen shots, because its dialog editor can create hyperlink controls. If you are using InstallShield or another tool that doesn't support hyperlink controls (yet) but has a way to modify the msi tables directly, you can create a hyperlink control using these easy steps:

Create a static text control
Set its text in HTML format: like this:
<a href=http://www.installsite.org>www.InstallSite.org</a>
where the href parameter specifies the URL and the text between the opening and the closing tag is what gets displayed.
Go to Direct Editor and select the table named Control.
Find your text control and change the Type from Text to Hyperlink.

This manual procedure even gives you more flexibility. For instance you could hyperlink only part of the text, while in Advanced Installer the complete text is hyperlinked. The following screen shot was created with InstallShield using this string for the Hyperlink Text:

Please visit <a href="http://www.installsite.org">InstallSite.org</a> for more samples

The effect of MSIFASTINSTALL

stefan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:35:04 GMT

In MSI 5 there’s a new property MSIFASTINSTALL that can be set on the command line or in the Property table to speed up large install packages. It’s a combination of flags that will avoid creation of a system restore point, skip some costing tasks, reduce the frequency of progress messages, or any combination of these.

Alex Verboon has run some performance tests to see how much installation time is reduced by setting the MSIFASTINSTALL property. He doesn’t explicitly specify which build of Windows 7 he used for his test, but it probably was the RC build (since the beta version has expired and the RTM is not available yet).

Alex Verboon’s blog article:
Reduce software installation time

New Advanced Installer 7.1 brings Windows 7 and WI 5 compatibility and support

stefan — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:02:39 GMT

On July 8th, 2009 Caphyon Ltd. announced the latest edition of its Windows Installer authoring tool. The new Advanced Installer enables developers and system administrators to easily build and repackage complex applications into reliable, ready to deploy MSI and EXE installers, patches and on-line updates.

The 7.1 release completes our Windows 7 and Windows Installer 5.0 compatibility and support. From new features readily available to your installers to better usability and OS integration, Advanced Installer makes checking for and using the new Microsoft platform a snap.

Multiple user interface improvements are available in this version, both in installers using the Enhanced UI feature and in Advanced Installer itself where a new set of cleaner, modernized and better suited for the Vista/Windows 7 operation systems icons debuts.

New predefined ready-to-use prerequisites, launch conditions, searches and ten new custom ways of searching on the user's computer ensure that your application's install never fails due to problems in third-party frameworks, components or products.

Other improvements in this version:

Single Package Authoring for WI 5.0
Enhanced Service Configuration for WI 5.0
Ability to generate Unicode MSI Databases
File associations in Windows Mobile projects
New configuration content report for Windows Mobile projects
Display progress information on Windows 7 Taskbar for: Auto Updater, Repackager, package build, Enhanced UI installation and EXE bootstrapper installation
Added Checklist control in Enhanced UI
Added Hyperlink control in Enhanced UI and Windows Installer 5.0 UI
Multiple selection ListBox and ListView controls in Enhanced UI
ASP.NET registration for an IIS web application
Logging support for chained packages
Extended search support with 10 additional methods
Predefined searches for RegAsm, Regsvr32, Aspnet_regiis and Microsoft Office installation path
Microsoft Silverlight predefined prerequisite
DirectX 11 predefined launch condition
Windows 7 predefined launch condition
Refreshed Advanced Installer icon set

Advanced Installer is available in four editions, starting with the Freeware community edition and offering a 30-day trial period for the other editions.

For more information and ordering Advanced Installer please see:
www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

(Text based on a press release from Caphyon Ltd.)

MSI Compatibility: Lying about VersionNT and ServicePackLevel

stefan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:39:33 GMT

MSI 5 on Windows 7 introduces a new application compatibility setting, as Chris Jackson describes in his blog.

To work around too strict OS version checks in LaunchConditions, Windows Installer can automatically try several variations of values for the VersionNT and ServicePackLevel properties to circumvent the condition. For instance it will start with VersionNT=600 (Windows Vista) and ServicePackLevel=14, then count down the SP level (13, 12, …, 0), then repeat the same with VersionNT=502 (Windows Server 2003) and so on, until the LaunchCondition succeeds. This is a per-msi setting on the local machine, which can be turned on using this dialog:

According to the blog, Windows Installer also sets these properties which might be useful to detect that version lying is going on:

SHIMFLAGS
SHIMVERSIONNT
SHIMSERVICEPACKLEVEL

As far as I know these properties are currently not documented in MSDN.

Original article:
Unraveling the Mysteries of MSI Compatibility Modes in Windows 7

InstallShield 2010 Released

stefan — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:55:14 GMT

(Updated to fix broken hyperlinks)

On October 18, 2009 Acresso released the latest version of their setup authoring tool InstallShield, which reportedly is used by over 71,000 ISVs and enterprises to create installers for Windows and mobile devices.

What's new in InstallShield 2010

Supports Microsoft App-V with new InstallShield Virtualization Pack - in addition to Windows Installer (MSI) and proprietary InstallScripts, developers can now create virtual application packages for Microsoft App-V (formerly Softgrid)
New Microsoft technologies supported natively in InstallShield – InstallShield 2010 supports Windows 7 and MSI 5 features so developers can use them now on Windows XP and Vista platforms. It also has support for Windows Server 2008 R2.
Improved support for Web applications – Expanded IIS features now include all IIS 7 settings.
IDE usability improvements – New flattened architecture and dynamic and global searching significantly increase developer productivity. Developers can spend 10 minutes to learn the new IDE and then benefit from significant time saved on daily tasks.
More options for runtime user-experience customization – ISVs have more customization options to create user experience and branding with new support for billboards, Flash, HTML, and hyperlinks. New branding options can help ISVs up/cross-sell their software by adding more user interaction through the installation process.
Better support for multi-language installation – InstallShield now supports Unicode. Also developers will save significant time by having a single view of all languages with dynamic searching and replacing global settings at once.
plus over 400 new and enhanced features from customer requests

Detailed information can be found in the datasheet and in the release notes:

If you’re in Europe you can buy InstallShield 2010 from the InstallSite Shop.

Changes in Activation Process and EULA

Changes in the End User License Agreement (EULA) and in the activation process include:

Licenses can now be “de-activated” manually, even offline.
Activation needs to be repeated on a yearly basis.
Using InstallShield in a virtual machine is now allowed.

I have created a side-by-side comparison of the old and the new EULA and a summary of the changes in the activation process. For full details please read Acresso’s official documents:

InstallShield 2010 EULA (PDF)
InstallShield Activation User Guide (PDF)

End of Life announced for InstallShield 12 and InstallAnywhere 8

Together with the release of InstallShield 2010 Acresso also announced the end of life for InstallShield 12 and InstallAnywhere 8 (all language editions). This means that you can upgrade from these versions only until October 30, 2009. After that date you would have to pay the full license price.

October 31, 2009 is the deadline for the following product versions:

InstallShield 12 (all languages)
InstallShield 2008 German
InstallShield 2009 German
InstallAnywhere 8 (all languages)
InstallAnywhere 2008 (German and French)
InstallAnywhere 2009 (German and French)

The end of life for the localized German versions of InstallShield and the German and French versions of InstallAnywhere had already been announced two weeks ago.
The English versions of InstallShield 2008 and higher and InstallAnywhere 2008 and higher are not affected by this announcement.

More information about these end of life announcements can be found in the InstallSite Shop and the Acresso Website.

Sample package from DesktopEngineer.com helps you becoming familiar with new MSI 4 and MSI 5 features

stefan — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:50:33 GMT

Darwin Sanoy of DesktopEngineer.com has published a MSI sample package with a step-by-step self learning guide that leads you through testing new features in Windows Installer versions 4 and 5. Topics covered include:

signed and unsigned UAC prompts, signing MSI packages
elevation scenarios and custom actions permissions
per-user installations
full msi file caching
and more

Download: Test Package and 30 Page Lab Manual for Testing MSI 4.0 (Vista) and MSI 5.0 (Win7) Features

Answers from the MSI Team

stefan — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:31:25 GMT

Last week at Microsoft’s Global MVP Summit I had the opportunity to sit down with the MSI and WiX teams. It was great to meet all these Windows Installer experts and we had some interesting discussions. With me I had some questions from readers of my blog and visitors of my web site, and the MSI team was kind enough to answer them, as below. I want to thank everyone who took the time to meet with me – it was a great experience.

Only some of the people I met:

Zainab Hakim (program manager for Windows Installer), Hemchander "Hem" Sannidhanam (Dev lead for Windows Installer), Bob Arnson (WiX project admin), Ashish Awasthi (developer on the MSI team), Rob Mensching (WiX project admin), Mark Rovetta (documentation writer for Windows Installer)

Answers to your Questions

Please note that some questions were sent to me in German so I translated them to English. I also slightly shortened or re-worded some of the questions.

Question from David: Our problem is basically a componentization problem, and the very, very limited ability to return information from an MSI install. In our case, we chain a number of 3rd-party MSIs into our install. What we would like to be able to do is have custom return codes for msiexec so that we can communicate to our distribution mechanism that the overall install succeeded, but that a particular component package failed. (InstallShield gave us a custom fix that allows error return codes to be ignored for chained .msi packages). Ideally, this could be something like an extra column the Error table, and an option indicating whether that error is a terminating condition or not.

Answer from the MSI Team: Like you already mentioned, handling the exit codes from msiexec.exe would actually be a functionality of the chainer. To get the exact error codes you could use a chainer with external UI, which would receive the error messages via its callback function.

Question from Colby: When will the MSI team add support for managed code custom actions (similar to the WiX DTF extensions)?

Answer from the MSI Team: DTF is a great solution for this purpose. Like every company, the MSI team at Microsoft doesn’t have unlimited resources and therefore has to set priorities. We work to improve and advance the platform instead of duplicating solutions that are already available from third parties.

Question from Carsten: We are using .NET applications more and more. Therefore .NET support in Windows Installer is becoming increasingly important. A hot topic is starting of .NET applications from a network drive. To enable starting from network drives we need to create a code group in the .NET runtime which contains the key of the strong named digital signature of our components. With this code group we can specify a zone in which the .NET code will be executed, for instance the “internet” zone. We currently use installer class custom actions (written in C#) to create this code group. Will there be a Windows Installer solution for such configurations?

Answer from the MSI Team: When using .NET 3.5 SP1 the runtime now trusts network shares (editor’s note: see .NET 3.5 SP1 Runs Managed Applications From Network Shares). Other than that, managed code custom actions are a viable solution.

Question from Carsten: In a Major Upgrade, .NET components which have been installed in the GAC will be removed during uninstall of the old version but not installed again during install of the new version, if the version of the .NET component hasn’t changed. Workarounds would be incrementing the file version of the component, even if the file hasn’t really changed, or moving the RemoveExistingProducts action to the end of the install sequence. The latter is not an option for us, and manually incrementing the file version isn’t a good solution either. Will future MSI versions have better support for GAC installs?

Answer from the MSI Team: This is a bug that has been fixed in Windows 7 (MSI 5). However, the fix has not been back ported to SP2 for Windows Vista and Server 2008 as yet.

Question from Carsten: Will there be better cooperation between Windows Installer and security tools like anti-virus tools? These are sometimes preventing InstallScript custom actions from running, or block applications that are being launched for installation, even if they are digitally signed.

Answer from the MSI Team: This is not a problem that Windows Installer can solve. A workaround would be to avoid script based custom actions. Also there are anti virus tools that are particularly careful with setups to avoid such false positives.

Question from Carsten: When doing an administrative install the digital signature is invalidated. Will there be a solution for this?

Answer from the MSI Team: While MSI 5 will fix the problem with invalidating the digital signatures of locally cached .msi files by not stripping any embedded CABs, it will not solve the issue for administrative installs. When installing from an administrative image the source must be trusted in some other way.

Windows 7 Beta Testers – don’t miss the Live Meeting and Chat on MSI 5

stefan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:06:30 GMT

Next week’s feature focus in the Windows 7 beta test will be on Windows Installer (and on Devices and Printers). As part of that, there’ll be a Live Meeting on Monday, March 2, and a chat on Thursday, March 5. These events are open to registered beta testers of Windows 7 and can be accessed from the calendar on Microsoft Connect.

In addition, there are a number of MSI related test tasks on Microsoft’s Scenario Feedback site.

Preparing for MVP Summit – Your Questions for the MSI Team?

stefan — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:43:00 GMT

It’s MVP Summit time again! Next week I’ll be travelling to Seattle and Redmond to attend the MVP Global Summit, an event where Microsoft invites MVPs from around the world to hear about the latest technologies, meet the product teams, network, and also have a little fun :)

For me this means that I’ll have the opportunity to sit down with the Windows Installer team (including their documentation writer) and also folks from the WiX team.

Now I have this idea to not only ask my own questions, but also on behalf of my blog readers. So is there anything you always (or recently) wanted to ask the MSI team or some feedback you want to give them? Please let me know. Either post your question as a comment on the blog or send it to me by e-mail skrueger [at] installsite.org

Of course I can’t promise that your questions will be answered (or in some cases I may not be allowed to publish the answer if it’s under NDA). But it’s worth a try.

Beta Test MSI 5 in Windows 7

stefan — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:51:47 GMT

Windows Installer 5 is included in the Windows 7 Beta. In addition to bug reporting Microsoft asks for “Scenario Feedback”. Microsoft describes more than 250 usage scenarios that you can try and report your satisfaction and whether you think this feature is ready for RTM. Seven of these scenarios are about Windows Installer, like installing large MSI packages, installing applications per-user, or configuring services.

I’d highly encourage every setup developer to get the beta and run your setup on it. Now is the time to report any problems to Microsoft, so they can fix them or add workarounds (it’s common practice for Microsoft to add shims for specific applications) or to identify areas where your setup needs to be adjusted.

A number of installer related issues have already been identified - not bugs in MSI itself but incompatibilities – which are causing problems like missing or wrong icons or even crash the installer engine.

You may also have to adjust some functionality of your setup. For instance, the Quick Launch Bar is gone (it’s deprecated and hidden by default).

MSDN and TechNet subscribers have unlimited access to the Windows 7 Beta. Everyone else can download it through February 9th. The beta is available in five languages.

MSI 5.0 Beta SDK and Documentation available

stefan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:20:31 GMT

Beta documentation for the latest version of Windows Installer is now available for online reading. The online documentation for MSI 5.0 was built on January 15, 2009.

The Windows 7 SDK has been published about a week earlier. It includes an older version of the documentation, built on November 21, 2008, and new versions of tools like Orca.

Windows Installer 5 Documentation

The online documentation on MSDN is a convenient way to see what’s new in MSI 5.0 without having to download and install the SDK (see below).

(Note: Some MSDN pages don’t render properly for me today. Not sure what’s causing this.)

Some notable news in MSI 5:

Version Numbers

As expected, VersionMsi is now “5.00”. Maybe a bit suprising, VersionNT for Windows 7 is ”601”. That’s because Windows 7 internally is version number 6.1. Microsoft did this to avoid compatibility problems with setups or applications that check the major version number of Windows and might refuse to run if it’s larger than 6.

User Interface

A new Hyperlink control can be placed on dialogs. It will open the default browser and only supports HTML. When such a setup is run on an older version of the MSI runtime, the Hyperlink control is not displayed at all.

New control events MsiPrint to print the content of a ScrollableText control (typically used to display a license agreement) and MsiLaunchApp to start a program that has been installed by the package. The latter references the File table, so it can’t be used to start a program that’s not included in the setup.

Service Configuration

There’s a new standard action called MsiConfigureServices and two related tables MsiServiceConfig and MsiServiceConfigFailureActions. I haven’t figured out yet how they work together with the other service related tables and actions.

Per-User Installations

Setting the new MSIINSTALLPERUSER will automatically redirect files and registry entries to per-user locations, as described in a previous post. For example, ProgramFilesFolder is automatically set to %localappdata%\programs if you do a per-user install.

Configuring Permissions

The MsiLockPermissionsEx table is a replacement for the LockPermissions table. According to the documentation a package should not contain both tables. If this won’t be changed in the RTM version it will limit your ability to create msi packages that will also work with previous versions of the MSI runtime. Instead of Domain, User and Permission it uses security descriptor definition language (SDDL) to indicate permissions to apply to the selected object. A new column data type FormattedSDDLText has been added for this purpose. The MsiLockPermissionsEx also has a Condition column to decide whether to apply the specified permission.

Speeding up large install packages

The new MSIFASTINSTALL property can be set on the command line or in the Property table to avoid creation of a system restore point, skip some costing tasks, reduce the frequency of progress messages, or any combination of these.

Setting Shortcut Properties

According to the documentation, the MsiShortcutProperty table enables Window Installer to set properties for shortcuts that are also Windows Shell objects. (I have no idea what that means.)

Windows Installer API

There are three new installer functions: MsiEnumComponentsEx, MsiEnumClientsEx and MsiGetComponentPathEx.

ICE Validation and Automation Interface

Finally there are five new Internal Consistency Evaluators (ICEs) and some additions to the automation interface which you can find in the documentation.

Windows Installer 5 SDK

The SDK for MSI 5.0 is part of the Windows 7 SDK. It’s currently only available in form of a 1.3 GB .iso file download. You either have to burn this .iso to a DVD or mount it as a drive in Virtual PC or using some other tool. Then you can install the SDK from that drive.

Among other tools the SDK includes the Orca MSI table editor version 5.0.6764.0

Download the SDK .iso file:
Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1: BETA

PDC2008: Windows Installer and ClickOnce in Windows 7

stefan — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:13:10 GMT

This week Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008) took place in Los Angeles. Several new and improved products and technologies were introduced there, like Windows 7, Windows Azure (Microsoft's "cloud" operating system) and Visual Studio 2010. I wasn't there but while I'm watching the session recordings I'll blog about PDC news that I think are interesting for setup developers and application deployment.

My first PDC2008 blog post is about Windows Installer and ClickOnce in Windows 7. Tyler Robinson, Lead Program Manager in the Application Deployment team, gave one session at PDC2008, and it's available as a recording on Channel 9:

Windows 7: Deploying Your Application with Windows Installer (MSI) and ClickOnce

Here are some bits from this session...

Windows Installer 4.5

The first 25 minutes of the 85 minutes session, Tyler actually talks about MSI 4.5, which is the latest released version of Windows Installer. He explains the intention behind the changes in MSI 4.5 and mentions how they can be combined to create smarter setups, illustrated with some demos.

Tyler also mentions that MSI 4.5 will be included in the next service packs for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, as opposed to Vista RTM, Vista SP1 and Server 2008 RTM which come with MSI 4.0.

ClickOnce, .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and the new Client Profile Configuration Designer

From 0:24:50 to 0:38:20 Tyler talks about the ClickOnce functionality and improvements in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, technologies that are already available today. He also covers the .NET Client Profile which should streamline redistribution of the .NET Framework, not only for ClickOnce but also Windows Installer or other setup technologies (but he doesn't discuss the limitations of Client Profile).

At 0:31:15 Tyler introduces the Client Profile Configuration Designer which has just been made available as beta. It's essentially a tool that can chain multiple packages such as the .NET Framework and other prerequisites, as well as ClickOnce packages, MSI based setups or even scripts. It provides a seamless and customizable user interface with one progress bar across all the packages, and can either defer reboots requests until the end, or handle reboots between packages gracefully. Optionally it can also create a combined uninstall experience instead of separate entries in the Add/Remove Programs control panel. The Client Profile Configuration Designer can be downloaded from windowsclient.net/wpf/ in the Deployment section.

MSI 5 in Windows 7, and a first look at InstallShield 2010

0:41:15 is the starting point for the second part of Tyler's session where he covers new, pre-release products. Windows 7 will include MSI 5.0 which he promises will bring up to 20% faster installation times and improved reliability.

Uninstalling a digitally signed package from the Add/Remove Programs control panel will now show the appropriate UAC dialog with the gray banner and your product name instead of the "scary" version with the yellow banner and the warning about an "unknown program" that wants to modify your computer.

The Lock Permissions and Service Configuration standard actions have been improved. Tyler mentions inheritance in the LockPermissions table but doesn't go into more details, and I've haven't had the time yet to download the new SDK documentation.

You can now add hyperlink controls on dialogs and there's built-in print functionality for the EULA dialog.

To make systems administrators' lives easier the MSI team has added functionality to perform limited Windows Installer operations on "offline" disk images in WIM format. This enables administrators to inventory the applications in the image and perform patch applicability checks without having to boot into the image.

MSI 5 will improve support for per-user applications, allowing you to create a single msi package that can be installed per-machine or per-user, and only displays the elevation prompt if per-machine is selected. This includes automatic redirection of files and registry entries to per-user locations, which are now documented in the official guidelines. For example, ProgramFilesFolder is automatically set to %localappdata%\programs if you do a per-user install. Of course, a per-user installation can't do any machine-wide modifications like installing services or GAC assemblies. In his demo at 1:04:10 Tyler uses an alpha-release of InstallShield 2010 which he expects to go into beta early next year.

There was no information if or when MSI 5.0 will be made available as a redistributable for older versions of Windows.

Q&A

Finally, starting at 1:10:25, Tyler spends 15 minutes answering questions from the audience, or in some cases deferring the reply to the Windows Installer Team Blog.

This concludes my first PDC2008 post. I plan to write more in the next days.