MAKEMSI quickly and reliably creates MSI files in a non-programmatic way\Windows Installer Basics

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Windows Installer Basics

Just to remove any possible confusion by "Windows Installer" I mean the set of Microsoft developed technologies for software installation and not a generic term for creating installers for Windows! You might also wish to have a look at the Windows Installer information on Wikipedia.

This section covers the basics and is not meant as much more than a quick introduction of the main information (it does not replace the need to view the Microsoft "MSI.CHM" document). You should also have a look at the "links" section in this documentation, the FAQ, newsgroup and other links will tell you a lot more.

The Windows Installer program "MSIEXEC.EXE" does all the installation work, it is a data (SQL database) driven installation process which can be extended via custom actions.

Why package at all? See this this blog entry. While it does contain Windows Installer specifics the concepts apply to any type of deployment and manual processes.

Specific areas that are currently available:

• Add/Remove Applet or Software Explorer and its configuration
• Advertising
• Bootstrapper EXE Programs
• Components
• Caching Of MSIs, Patches etc
• Conditions
• Custom Actions
• Database Tables
• Directories
• Features
• Formatted Strings
• GUIDS
• Installation Types (per-user or per-machine)
• Internationalization
• Logging
• Merge Modules
• MSIEXEC.EXE command lines (with samples)
• Patches
• Properties
• Registry Usage
• Resource Life Cycle
• Return Codes and Error Codes or Text
• Reboots
• Shortcuts
• Source Availability (msi) & Source List
• Transforms
• .idt (text representation of database tables)
• Validation of Individual Row Manipulations as well as Completed Databases
• VB Declarations
• Limitations - My Whinge Page!

Very Useful Tools

A short list of some of the more useful tools:

1. ORCA
2. Windows Installer CleanUp Utility
3. Virtual Machines
4. PROCESS EXPLORER

Please email me any feedback, additional information or corrections. See this page online (look for updates) MAKEMSI© is (C)opyright Dennis Bareis 2003-2008 (All rights reserved). Friday May 02 2008 at 8:41am Visit MAKEMSI's Home Page