ALLUSERS property

[Viviana Vc]

Hi all,

In InstallShiled 11.5 I set the ALLUSERS in Property Manager to 1 and I
get the following warning: "ISDEV : warning -6261: The property ALLUSERS
is defined in the property table. This may result in a setup that is
always installed per-machine when it has been advertised as a per-user
install. It is recommended that the ALLUSERS property not be defined in
the Property table."

What am I doing wrong? and How was my installer "has been advertised as
a per-user install"?

Thank you,
Viv

 

[Phil Wilson]

I think it's saying that if this product was advertised as a per-user setup
(using msiexec /ju command line) to be installed by using a shortcut, the
product would not in fact install per-user because you have forced ALLUSERS
to be per-machine.

 

[Viviana Vc]

Hi Phil,

I think it's saying that if this product was advertised as a per-user setup
(using msiexec /ju command line) to be installed by using a shortcut, the
product would not in fact install per-user because you have forced ALLUSERS
to be per-machine.

OK, but this means that because any MSI can be run with /ju if you set
the ALLUSERS property to 1 you will always get this warning.

I made all the shortcuts to not be advertised and still get this
warning. In IS help at this warning it's said:
Error: -6261
Description: The property ALLUSERS is defined in the Property table.
This will result in a setup that will always install per machine.
Troubleshooting Information: Go to the Property Manager and change the
property to an empty property or remove the property.

But this is not what I want. I definitely want the product to be
installed per-machine so I need to have that ALLUSERS on 1 in the
Property table right? Or is it any other way to specify from the
beginning of the installation that you want to install the product
per-machine?
How can I get rid of this warning?

Thank you,
Viv

 

[Phil Wilson]

You could just have a type 51 custom action that sets ALLUSERS.

 

[Viviana Vc]

Thanks Phil for the suggestion, but I think I will leave the ALLUSERS
set to 1 in the Property table and just ignore the warning. As far as I
read, in the Property table you can put the properties with the desired
default values and this is exactly what I want for ALLUSERS.

Thx,
Viv

 

[Comcast]

Viv, it won't work. To see what I mean, run "msiexec /ju your.msi" Then
right click on the icons or menus that are created and look at the folder
the shortcuts were created in. The only way I've found that works, is to
set the ALLUSER property to 1 at the beginning of the scripts.

Steve

 

[Viviana Vc]

Hi Steve,

Yes, I tried that and indeed the shortcuts are created for current user
only.

What do you mean by "set the ALLUSER property to 1 at the beginning of
the scripts."? What scripts?

And what would be the standard procedure recommended by MS in this case?
(I mean you really want your application to be per-machine so it
shouldn't be possible to advertise it only for a user. How can you do
that?)

Thanks,
Viv

 

[Rich Milburn [MVP]]

Hi Viv -

I use InstallShield 11 and with 10 and 10.5 as well as 11 I get that
warning. It is, however, merely a warning, and does not indicate a
problem with your package. It is merely warning you that by setting
the ALLUSERS property in the property table you have waived the
possibilty of installing for just the current user. If you want to
install with shortcuts going in the All Users profile, then that is
perhaps the easiest way to do it.

If you just can't bear to leave that warning, though, and you will be
using a setup.exe, then you can set ALLUSERS=1 in the "MSI command line
arguments" field under Media > Releases > Product Configuration > Your
Release properties. I typically set logging information there, and
sometimes other settings as well. for example,
/L*V %temp%\MyInstall.log ALLUSERS=1 /qb!-

If you are not using a setup.exe, you could also just add ALLUSERS=1 to
the msiexec.exe command line parameters, of course.

hope that helps -

Rich Milburn [MVP]

 

[Viviana Vc]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for your answer.
In other words: I can safely ignore that warning and I can let the
ALLUSERS property in the property table set to 1 as my product has to be
installed per-machine only.

Still if smbd runs msiexec /ju my.msi the shortcuts will be adevertised
for current user only, even though the product is per-machine. Is this
smth I need to avoid? If yes how?

Thanks,
Viv

 

[Rich Milburn [MVP]]

Hey Viv -
you're creating this package right? In that case, what you might want
to do is:
1) under Media > Releases > Your Product Configuration, make 2
releases: one msi, and one setup.exe
2) you can name the setup.exe anything you want, click on the release
and change the last 2 entries from setup to whatever you want
3) right-click on each release, and use the build wizard to make one an
msi like I think you have, and the other make it use setup, but don't
include dotnet, Windows Installer, etc - and make it package/compress
the whole thing into the exe. I think that's the network type, if
memory serves me (one type makes a separate msi and setup, and another
type -CD I think - adds other files like setup.ini.
4) In the Release properties for the exe, look for the MSI Command Line
Arguments line. To this, add your logging and other parameters. I
usually add the following: /L*V %temp%\mymsi.log /qb!-
/L is logging, *V gets everything, and /qb!- is silent install,
progress bar only, no modal completion, no cancel button. It works
well for my purposes, and your goals sound similar.
5) Batch Build (it's in the Build menu, or right-click the product
configuration and choose it) both releases at the same time. Then they
are identical, and if you need to distribute for group policy you can
use the MSI, and for users you can use the setup.exe. Users running
the setup.exe can still add /v to override, but most don't know how.

hope that helps, sorry for the delay getting back -
Rich

 

[Viviana Vc]

Thanks Rich for your answer. I'll give it a try,

Viv