Question

I implemented an installer for our product. Installer needs administrator privileges, so I used setup bootstrapper with a manifest file (as recommended here) to get these privileges on a Windows machines with UAC enabled. Installation and uninstall goes fine – the user is asked for permission and the installer does what it needs to do.

But if you run Control panel → Programs and Features and select “Change”* for installed program, an error occurs (custom, from installer LaunchConditions), telling that the installer needs administrative privileges. And I can’t find any way to ask for permission in a such case – Windows simply runs the MSI file and doesn’t know anything about required permissions.

Even more strange is the repair functionality – it asks for permission, but then fails to do some actions that were allowed during installation, using SetupBootstrapper.

I found a similar problem here:

But the proposed solutions are unacceptable in our case.

The only workaround for the change functionality now is to always use SetupBootstrapper and do not use the Programs and Features menu, but that is not very user-friendly and forces the user to keep the installer on his/her hard drive.

Has anybody better advise?

PS: I use WiX for creating the installer, so it would be great to hear about WiX solutions, but I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t depend on the installer creation language, but only on MSI specifics.

Answer 1

What actions are failing? If they are actions that you added to the installation, make sure that such actions are defined with Impersonate="no" and Execute="deferred" (or "commit" or "rollback") and that they are sequenced somewhere between InstallInitialize and InstallFinalize.