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November 29, 2007

Windows Installer Useful Web Sites

This blog post is going to be a continual work in progress. Please feel free to contribute to the list via a comment.

Windows Installer Useful Web Sites


Installation Phases and In-Script Execution Options for Custom Actions in Windows Installer

3 comments:

Colby Ringeisen said...

Here's a few links I put on our internal wiki for our support engineers:


Introductory / General Reference (for everyone)
How Windows Installer Shortcuts Work
Setup Sense and Sensibility
Unofficial UAC in MSI Notes
Rob's “Saw Tooth” Diagram
Rob’s “Four Squares” Diagram
Credential Prompt and Permissions Explained

Advanced References (primarily for installation developers)
Main Windows Installer documentation page
Microsoft Windows Installer Team Blog
Robert Flaming - Setup Sense and Sensibility
Rob Mensching - Openly Uninstalled
Stefan Krueger - InstallSite.org
Chris Painter - Deployment Engineering
Heath Stewart's Blog
Bob Arnson - Joy of Setup

Training
DesktopEngineer.com MSI Training

Troubleshooting
System Policy Settings And Windows Installer
The installation behavior of the Windows Installer can be configured by an administrator by using the Group Policy Editor (GPE). Certain policy settings can affect the way Windows Installer runs or even whether or not a particular user has the ability to execute initial installations, upgrades to installed applications, or patches to installed applications (note: this includes users who are members of the Administrators user group). These polices can be set at the user level and\or at the machine level. Opening the MSI log file using the MSI Log File Utility (see link below) and then selecting "Analyze" and then "Policies" will display all the policy settings for the user who ran the installation. Any policy that shows as enabled ("1" instead of "0") is a _potential_ problem for Windows Installer installations. The following MSDN page lists each of these policies and where the policy setting is located in the system registry: System Policies

Error Messages
Pre-defined Standard Errors [1-27999]
Pre-defined System Errors[1-27999]
Windows Installer Errors
MSI Process (msiexec.exe or instmsi.exe) Error Codes
InstallShield Launcher (Setup_PSQLType_.exe) Error Codes
Error Table

Unofficial Error Troubleshooting Resources
Microsoft Windows Installer Team Blog
InstallShield Consumer Central
AppDeploy.com

Anonymous said...

Hi guys

where is the link for the MSI Log File Utility mentioned in the article, troubleshooting?
Amauri

Anonymous said...

WiLogUtl.exe is a part of Windows Platform SDK and usually located in "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2\Bin"