Visual Studio Setup Project: How Can I force an Uninstaller to run in Administrator mode?

Question

I've created a Visual studio Setup Project, and I have an Installer Classes created for my main App. In this Installer Class, I overridden the Uninstaller function to clean extra folders created by my app. This works fine in windows XP, but not in Windows 7 since I assume it has something to do with UAC. How Can I force my Uninstaller to elevate privileges?

I've asked this question in another post, but I wasn't clear on my intentions.

I've found these links but I don't know if it's relevant:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370852.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370134%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

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UPDATE (11/7/2011)

I found out about Orca which it can be used to modify the msi install app properties, but there are no proper documentation for it, (or examples/tutorials). So here are the steps I took to fix this issue:

1. open the appInstal.msi with Orca.
2. from the Left Tables click on customAction
3. add a new entry to the end of all the rows (by double clicking a new row)
4. type Elevate_Install_Uninstall for Action names and 3072 for type
5. type ALL for target and leave Source empty

Hope this helps someone/

Answer 1

My assumption is that you created a new custom action which executed when uninstalling your MSI package. To run a custom action elevated — either on install or on uninstall — it has to be deferred and it has to be marked with noimpersonation flag.

In WiX, you would set these properties of the CustomAction element:

• Execute="deferred" and
• Impersonate="no".

In terms of Windows Installer, your custom action has to have these bits set: msidbCustomActionTypeInScript + msidbCustomActionTypeNoImpersonate; see Custom Action In-Script Execution Options.

Answer 2

Vista's UAC is similar to window's 7's so you should find some help here:

http://www.professionalvisualstudio.com/blog/2007/10/05/enabling-your-application-for-uac-on-vista/

This write up details how to adjust your app to run without running into problems with UAC.

It allows you to add a manifest file to your solution to make sure it runs at a certain level privilege wise.

Answer 3

Add these attributes to the Uninstall procedure:

    [System.Security.Permissions.SecurityPermission(System.Security.Permissions.SecurityAction.Demand)]
    public override void Uninstall(IDictionary savedState)
    {
        base.Uninstall(savedState);
    }