Inconsistent MSI behavior

1
votes

We use InstallAware 18. I've noticed some inconsistent behavior.

Installation Context changes without my knowing. If I double click on the MSI I've built I usually can expect a per-User Installation. That's fine for us. HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\MyApp.msi

However, after a few hours of testing the msi in a Powershell script, the MSI ends up doing a per-machine installation HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\MyApp.msi

NOTE:
Even if I use msiexec.exe, I run into this issue. I'm not using the ALLUSERS property from the command line, nor do I have the value set in the MSI.

1
installationwindows-installerinstallaware
What do the logs say? On MSI logging and interpretation. And obviously check the property table to verify that ALLUSERS isn't set there anyway. Maybe the tool suddenly added it? – Stein Åsmul
@SteinÅsmul I'll revisit the logs. I'm still relatively new to this, and that log file is a little confusing to me. – ezG
This annotated MSI log (PDF) might help. Also see the whole section called "Interpreting MSI Log Files" here for more tips. In your case I would search for ALLUSERS. – Stein Åsmul
@SteinÅsmul Again, thank you. I'm pouring through documentation, and what's becoming very obvious is that I don't know enough to ask the right questions and am therefore going down many rabbit holes. – ezG

1 Answers

0
votes

[Credit to: Stein Asmul. The Links he posted gave me better questions to ask and got me on the trail to my eventual answer]

If you don't set the ALLUSERS property to some value yourself, the system will pick whatever it deems best (e.g. Is the install running as an Admin, or a regular user)

Now, I set ALLUSERS to "TRUE" within my MSI script. When I double click on the file, I get a Per-machine install.

NOTE: (/q flag seems to ignore 'ALLUSERS' property)
msiexec.exe /i myapp.msi -- gets a per-machine install.
msiexec.exe /i myapp.msi /qn -- get a per-user install.

After repeated testing, I can say that /q definitely causes MSIEXEC.exe to ignore ALLUERS=TRUE (or change it to FALSE). I'm not sure why. Perhaps this is unique to the InstallAware product; I can't be sure; I'm still learning