Changing Property During RemoveExistingProducts Action

[Tom Kufeldt]

General Question:
Is it possible to change the value of a property prior to executing the
RemoveExistingProducts action during a major upgrade without using a custom
action?

Specifics
I have authored a basic msi package using ORCA and inadvertently made it a
per-user installation by omitting the ALLUSERS property. I have to change
it to per-machine but need to be able to perform upgrades. My upgrade
testing seems to indicate that since ALLUSERS was set to 1 by the new msi
the RemoveExistingProducts is then executed as per-machine based on the
value in ALLUSERS.

At the conclusion of the upgrade the Windows Installers contains references
to a per-user installation and a per-machine installation. Removing the
application from ARP functions correctly but leaves behind an entry in ARP.
This entry no longer functions yielding a popup that states that remove is
only valid for installed products. I can remove the per-user using msiexec
/i [ProductCode].

I would like to change the value of ALLUSERS to null prior to executing the
RemoveExistingProducts action.

Thanks,
tomk.

 

[Carolyn Napier [MSFT]]

Major upgrades can only upgrade of products installed in the same user context.
If the current install is per-user, it can only upgrade over per-user
installations. If the current install is per-machine, it can only upgrade over
per-machine installations. The Installer will log an entry in the case where it
ignores a product to upgrade during the FindRelatedProducts action -- similar to
something like this:

"FindRelatedProducts: current install is per-user. Related install for product
'{9DA1613D-E904-4C7A-8CC2-582D47B81C99}
' is per-machine. Skipping..."

The ALLUSERSness of a product cannot be changed once it is installed. The
ALLUSERS property affects where application data is placed (HKCU vs. HKLM,
user's profile vs. all users's profile).



Hope this helps,
- Carolyn Napier
Microsoft Windows Installer Team

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