wix3

In WIX, how do you create a non advertised shortcut in the allusers profile? So far I've only been able to accomplish this with advertised shortcuts. I prefer non-advertised shortcuts because you can go to the shortcut's properties and use "find target". In the tutorials I've seen use a registry value for the keypath of a shortcut. The problem is they use HKCU as the root. When HKCU is used, and another user uninstalls the program (since it's installed for all users) the registry key is left behind. When I use HKMU as the root I get an ICE57 error, but the key is removed when another user

I didn't find an explicit answer to this question in the WiX Documentation (or Google, for that matter). Of course I could just write the appropriate registry keys in HKCR, but it makes me feel dirty and I'd expect this to be a standard task which should have a nice default solution. For bonus points, I'd like to know how to make it "safe", i.e. don't overwrite existing registrations for the file type and remove the registration on uninstall only if it has been registered during installation and is unchanged. saschabeaumont Unfortunately there's no way to do a "safe" association with Windows

I would like to use the WixUI_Minimal installer, but I don't want the license page. How can I do this? Ran Davidovitz I would simply use one of the already created WiX UI and override the sequence (make it higher so that it will override the previous setting): <Product> ... <UI> <UIRef Id="WixUI_InstallDir" /> <!-- Skip license dialog --> <Publish Dialog="WelcomeDlg" Control="Next" Event="NewDialog" Value="InstallDirDlg" Order="2">1</Publish> <Publish Dialog="InstallDirDlg" Control="Back" Event="NewDialog" Value="WelcomeDlg" Order="2">1</Publish> </UI> <Property Id="WIXUI_INSTALLDIR" Value=

Should I wrap all the files I want to install in individual components? What is the advantage of putting several files in one component? Wim Coenen One reason for "one file per component" is resiliency . When an application is started, Windows Installer can check whether the keypath of any component is missing. If the keypath is missing, the component is reinstalled/repaired. If a component has multiple files, then only one file can be the keypath. In wix you indicate this by setting KeyPath=yes on a File element. The other files will then not be fully protected by Windows Installer resiliency

When products A and B each install several MSIs and some of the MSIs are the same, will uninstalling either A or B affect the other? Does install location matter? Also, what happens when common MSI C's version is higher in Product B and B upgrades C on install? Now uninstalling B will remove the common MSI C which breaks Product A. How do you handle this gracefully without using the Permanent flag? Stein Åsmul The first thing that comes to mind with this question is whether the products in question are decomposed the way they should be. As a general rule all MSI files think they own whatever

I found an example on registering DLLs, Registering an Assembly for COM Interop in a MSI file with the Windows Installer XML toolset. , and WiX complains about the "AssemblyRegisterComInterop" attribute. I removed that and changed the "Assembly" attribute to win32, and it says I need to specify the AssemblyManifest attribute, but what should I put there? Troy Howard The easiest way (and Rob M will rant and rave about how this is wrong ) is just to use SelfRegCost=1 on the File tag for the DLL. This is wrong, because we should be explicitly controlling the registration of the DLL, not allowing

We have an installer which requires a reboot on install, but it is also rebooting on uninstall. Is there a way we can prevent the reboot when uninstalling? This is what we have at the moment: <InstallExecuteSequence> <ScheduleReboot After="InstallFinalize"/> </InstallExecuteSequence> Many thanks in advance! Restart Manager : The Restart Manager Feature of Windows (Installer) (middle page) is designed to help restart applications automatically during installation rather than requiring a reboot . This feature should always be used to try to eliminate reboot requirements. Only in very special