Windows Installer ability to place short-cut with different URIs

Question

I have a windows form application which is being installed on client pc by using msi file trough active directories, application is a 32bit app which is being deployed to a 32 bit and 64 bit windows systems and as we know application folder names are different between 32 and 64 bit systems, Program Files and Program Files(x86), also during installation application shortcut is placed in startup folder so app will be started when PC us powered up. Question: Is there a chance to build msi by Windows Installer provided by Visual Studion in such a way that it will check what operating system its being installed at and place the shortcut in to start up folder with correct URI, to Program Files\Applicaiton\ or Program Files(x86)\Applicaiton?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Windows Installer packages are platform aware (x86, x64 ). Windows Installer doesn't support 64bit packages running on 32bit platforms or 32bit packages writing to 64bit ProgramFiles.

You can compile your EXE as AnyCPU and even though it's installed as 32bit it'll execute as 64bit. Although the Visual Studio team has moved away from that and compile as x86 by default in recent versions of Visual Studio.

Answer 2

Upon initialization, the Windows Installer gathers information about the operating system and automatically sets properties that can be used in optional conditional statements used by the setup application, such as VersionNT64 and "System Folder Properties"

In cases where it is necessary for the setup to know this information, it is preferred practice to allow the Windows Installer service to determine folder locations rather than try to hard-code this information into the package.