Synopsis

The MSI package displays a User Account Control (UAC) prompt for Administrator privileges multiple times to install the application. This is after creating a Basic MSI package with no setup launcher setup.exe by selecting No for the Setup Launcher setting in the Releases View under the Release > Setup.exe Tab. The user needs to be able to run the MSI as invoker with no Administrator privileges being required to run the target application.

Cause

The value of the ALLUSERS property, at install-time, determines the installation context.

The value ALLUSERS=2 enables the system to reset the value of ALLUSERS and the installation context depending on the user's privileges and the Windows version.

Resolution

An ALLUSERS property value of an empty string ("") specifies the per-user installation context.

If the value of the ALLUSERS property does not equal 2, the value of the MSIINSTALLPERUSER property is ignored and has no effect on the installation. The value of MSIINSTALLPERUSER property is ignored when installing the package using Windows Installer 4.5 or 5.0.x.

When elevated privileges are not required to install a Windows Installer package, the author of the package can suppress the dialog box that User Account Control (UAC) displays to prompt users for administrator authorization.

To suppress the display of the UAC dialog box when installing the application, the author of the package should do the following:

• Install the application using Window Installer 4.0 or later on Windows Vista.
• Do not depend on using elevated system privileges to install the application on the computer.
• Install the application in the per-user context and make this the default installation context of the package. If the ALLUSERS property is not set, the installer installs the package in the per-user context. If you do not include the ALLUSERS property in the Property Table, the installer does not set this property and so a per-user installation becomes the default installation context. You can override this default by setting the ALLUSERS property on the command line.
• Set Bit 3 in the Word Count Summary property to indicate that elevated privileges are not required to install the application.