InstallAware

I have upgraded our copy of InstallAware to version 6.4 (sp2.031207), and when installing on Vista, the program does not seem to be bringing up the privilege elevation dialog like it used to. this means that some elements of the install are failing unless the user knows to run the install as administrator. Did something change that I'm not aware of?

Its been changed to raise that dialog automatically if you are an admin, and to not raise it if you are not admin (thus avoiding an unnecessary elevation prompt for non-admins). If you are an admin running as normal user, you can always run-as admin, so this seems to be an elegant solution.

Is there any way to force the dialog for non-Admin's? It seems that the 8.0 runtime install requires Admin rights, and with the current behavior, the install partially runs before presenting an error message.

Also, isn't it more likely than not that an install program will be doing things that require Admin rights? That's why Vista automatically attempts to elevate the rights of programs with the word "setup" in them.

I the setup require you to be admin it should try to elevate since it fails if you don't.


Jørgen

jls wrote:I the setup require you to be admin it should try to elevate since it fails if you don't.


Jørgen

I agree, if the IA script has "Administrator priviledges" (the typo is in the dialog), selected then the installer should know to attempt elevation whenever possible. If the program knows that admin rights are required, it should do everything possible to get those rights for the user, otherwise it is just wasting the user's time.

The option in the design view emits MSIcode which uses the Get System Settings MSIcode command to determine if admin rights are available. However you can and might have customized your setup script to do a different type of setup when the user does not have admin privileges, rather than just quitting with a MessageBox error.

Since it is not possible for the compiler itself to tell what exactly you are doing in your script, this behavior is as designed.

Why can't you just add an option

"Must be Administrator" that will try to elevate the application.

Jørgen Storlie

I agree with Jørgen. We need an option that lets us change the manifest's requested execution level to "requireAdministrator". The right-click and "Run-As" solution is not acceptable, since Vista provides a new mechanism for automatically invoking "Run-As" when a standard user runs the installer.

Microsoft is trying to get users to run as standard users, but this is never going to happen if non-technical users have to jump through hoops to get to the "Run-As" prompt. As an ISV, we generally find that non-technical users will abandon an install rather than right-clicking "Run-As".

Our installations always require administrative elevation, so an option that always prompts standard users for administrative credentials makes sense.

This should definitely be an option. For users running an application from the web, where they do not save it first, this is a real issue.
Also, there are MS requirements for some programs that specify that non-admin users must be presented with a dialog asking for Admin Priviledges.