Question

My goal is to create a simple msi package that is supposed to do nothing but running a .bat script located in the same folder with the .msi. I don’t need to copy any files on target machine or create folders, etc. I tried to use Wix 3.5 with vb-script which will run .bat i need. The vb-code itself works perfectly, but inside .msi it acts in a strange way – i can see a message box with the ‘path’, i got no errors, but script doesn’t execute .bat.

 <Property Id="Launch">
  <![CDATA[
  Function Main()
    Set shell = CreateObject("WSCript.shell") 
    path = Session.Property("SourceDir") 
    MsgBox path
    shell.Run path & "sample.bat", 0, False
    Set shell = Nothing
    Main = 1
  End Function
  ]]>
</Property> 
<CustomAction Id="Die"
              VBScriptCall="Main"
              Property="Launch"                   
              Return="check"              
              Impersonate="yes"/>

  <InstallExecuteSequence>
     <Custom Action='Die' Before='RegisterProduct'> NOT Installed </Custom>  
  </InstallExecuteSequence> 

I also tried another way:

<Property Id='CMD'>cmd.exe</Property>
  <CustomAction Id='LaunchFile' Property='CMD' ExeCommand='[SourceDir]sample.bat' Return='check' Impersonate='yes'/> 

But if I put ‘notepad.exe’ in property – everythings works great, when I use ‘cmd.exe’ console opens and closes without executing my sample.bat. In case of ‘notepad.exe’, it shows the content of ‘sample.bat’. Could you guys help me out with this?

Answer 1

Well, that was easy… Actually, everything was ok, but .bat itself was calculating relative paths from %WinDir%\System32\ I just put CD %~dp0 as the first line of my .bat and it started to work properly.