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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-13T10:43:10+00:00

I have a request that I know many will shout about but I don’t

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I have a request that I know many will shout about but I don’t have any other way around it. In my WIX setup I have a dialog that uses the properties set in the setup to determine a product name(with version type etc) that ties in with our algorithm and a lock code that needs to be produced. Based on these the user enters their unlock key and the custom action pulls the details from all three text boxes to ensure it is correct. I did not write the algorithm for creating these and unfortunately can’t change it.

My issue is that I need to be able to create a product key in the registry before this dialog so that my lock code algorithm can read from it. So basically I need my custom actions to be elevated. I read somewhere that someone implemented a custom action to call msiexec but now I cannot find it and don’t know how to go about creating this. Has anyone ever had the same issues? I have been reading that people have but I can’t seem to find their solution or even if there is one. Thanks in advance

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  1. Editorial Team

    Immediate custom actions CANNOT be elevated. Period, end of story. #FACT

    What can you do?

    1) Use a setup.exe bootstrapper that is manifested to require admin and a Launch Condition in the MSI that enforces it was launched by the bootstrapper. ( Bootstrapper passes a property to the MSI SETUPEXEDRIVEN=1 is what InstallShield calls it. ) This ensures that the entire UI sequence is elevated. (Not a best practice but I’m putting it out there for you.)

    2) Write to HKCU instead of HKLM ( will likely require license code to be refactored but hey it was a broken design anyways. )

    3) Refactor the installers interface to the license API. I’ve done this before. I once worked for a company that expected the installer to call an EXE to validate a license. One big problem is the EXE is out of process and cannot communicate back to the installer. So they started writing “ISVALID” to the registry and I was then expected to write a VBScript around the EXE to flush the value, call the exe and then check the value and set the MSI property. Ummmm can you say #FAIL? The optimal solution was to force the dev team to create an API for the license code that I could call directly from a standard MSI custom action that didn’t require elevated permissions or any other hackery.

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