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scottd72
Level 7

Chained msi with single UI question

I have several setups chained together. When the setup starts each separate setup has their own little interface with a progress bar that runs, and when it is complete the small dialog closes and a new one comes up for the next setup. My question is, without moving to a suite project, is there any way to set chained installs to have a single UI instead of separate ones?
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(8) Replies
MichaelU
Level 12 Flexeran
Level 12 Flexeran

Windows Installer claims to support keeping a single external UI running across multiple packages in an embedded chaining scenario (that's the scenario that InstallShield's chained packages uses). However we don't offer an external UI that handles this, so you would have to create your own and wire it in. Instead, as you noted, InstallShield supports this much more directly with the Suite/Advanced UI Project type.

What's swaying you away from the suite approach - is it the overhead (time/risk/QA) of making the change, licensing concerns, missing or misunderstood capabilities of our suite UI, or something else?
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rguggisberg
Level 13

Scott,
FWIW,
I use a Suite project for something like you describe and it is working out very well. An advantage is that you can keep the individuality of your existing packages. I have slightly modified my Basic MSI projects that are included in the Suite to skip some of the dialogs if I am installing via Suite. For example, each package has its own EULA that is displayed if the packages are installed individually. However, if I am installing via Suite I display one EULA for the suite and skip the EULAs for the individual packages.

Another nice thing is that you can uninstall all of the packages at once by uninstalling the Suite (if you set it up to allow that).
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scottd72
Level 7

MichaelU wrote:

What's swaying you away from the suite approach - is it the overhead (time/risk/QA) of making the change, licensing concerns, missing or misunderstood capabilities of our suite UI, or something else?


Michael,

Thank you for your reply. Here are our reasons for not using the suite product:
1. We're already very invested in our own frontend application that manages the setups. It may be something we could consider in the future, however.
2. (minor) - We currently have all our products show up in Add/Remove programs as a single entry and we want to keep it that way. The suite project displays them all separately. We are also wanting to uninstall all products in a single transaction.
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scottd72
Level 7

rguggisberg wrote:

Another nice thing is that you can uninstall all of the packages at once by uninstalling the Suite (if you set it up to allow that).


How do you setup the suite to uninstall all packages at once?
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rguggisberg
Level 13

We currently have all our products show up in Add/Remove programs as a single entry and we want to keep it that way. The suite project displays them all separately. We are also wanting to uninstall all products in a single transaction.


Suite projects do show all projects separately, but the Suite shows up in Add/Remove programs too; and if you set up your Suite to allow it, you can either uninstall the packages individually or uninstall all at once by uninstalling the Suite.
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rguggisberg
Level 13

To uninstall all packages at once I have 2 methods:

1. Go to the General Information tab on your Suite project (I am only showing part of screen below).


2. I also have an "Uninstall All" option that the user can select if they execute Setup.exe for the suite.
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scottd72
Level 7

Excellent, thanks for the help.

I'm thinking of trying the suite project to solve my uninstall needs. I will still have my C++/MFC application that installs the packages, however, I will try building a suite project and copy only the suite's setup.exe to some location on the user's system. In the registry I will create an uninstall key that calls the setup.exe (..\Setup.exe" -remove -runfromtemp). In my testing this seems to work very nicely.

One thing I have noticed in my testing is that once the suite uninstalls all the products, the product names in Add/Remove products remain until you refresh (f5) Add/Remove. Is this just me seeing this?
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rguggisberg
Level 13

scottd72 wrote:

One thing I have noticed in my testing is that once the suite uninstalls all the products, the product names in Add/Remove products remain until you refresh (f5) Add/Remove. Is this just me seeing this?


No, that is not just you. I brought this up to Flexera a while back. The reply was that this is a Microsoft thing and beyond Flexera's control.
http://community.flexerasoftware.com/showthread.php?201780-Suite-Change-Requests&highlight=
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