I was also doing the installation on a Vista Ultimate machine and the setup fails when I double-click on the MSI file.
The Configuration of the machine I am testing on is as follows. A standard clean installed version of Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate on an Intel Core Duo 2 machine with 1Gig of Ram.
The Configuration of the Machine I am creating the MSI on is as follows. Windows XP Professional SP2 with MSI 3.1 Installed on an Intel Core Duo 2 machine with 1Gig of Ram.
My problem is still the same “When I run my exe file as an administrator on vista my application installs fine. But when I run my setup.msi (by double-clicking on it) that I created with the Group Policy Wizard I get the UAC prompt as expected but, after I click Allow nothing seems to happen.”
This behaviour is consistent for any type of MSI file I create with the Install Aware 6.4 Group Policy Wizard.
When installing an MSI that was created by Visual Studio 2005 I do not encounter this problem.
Please provide a detailed step wise procedure to achieve the correct installation results on the Vista Ultimate machine as you have.
IASupport:
Hmm – can you confirm that the setup was not working on your machines? I have just tried it on a couple of Vista Ultimate machines and it seems to work as normal…
Can you provide more information about your configuration?
Me:
Please find attached the setup.msi file I created with IA Group Policy Wizard.
IASupport:
Strange one – can you send me your msi file as generated by the Group Policy Wizard?
Me:
It would seem as if Vista has a problem with the MSI I created with group policy wizard.
When I run my exe file as an administrator on vista my application installs fine. But when I run my setup.msi that I created with the Group Policy Wizard I get the UAC prompt as expected but, after I click Allow nothing seems to happen.
I am running IA version 6.24 SP4 and compiling the exe, as well as creating the MSI via Group Policy manager, on an XP SP2 machine.
Now according to this Article, http://www.macrovision.com/company/news/newsletter/tips/is_vista.shtml this is why it might not work:
Setup works when using setup.exe but fails when directly launching the .msi file
Symptom: When you launch your setup by double clicking the .msi file or running msiexec it fails, but if you launch it using setup.exe your setup succeeds.
Cause: Windows Vista detects that setup.exe is an install program that will probably require elevated rights, and therefore displays the UAC prompt. As a result, the UI sequence will run with elevated privileges. However, if you launch the .msi file directly the UAC prompt will happen later, when your setup switches from the UI sequence to the Execute sequence. In this case the UI sequence runs with restricted permissions.
Solution: Custom actions that modify the target system (and therefore need elevated rights) should be scheduled as deferred in the system context and placed in the Execute sequence between InstallInitialize and InstallFinalize. Modifying the system in the UI sequence has never been good practice. Often, this was used to run child installs without using the deprecated "nested install" actions. The "InstallShield MSDE 2000 Object for NT Systems" is an example of this, and it will fail on Windows Vista.
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Yet I implore none of this functionality. What could I be doing wrong?
