problem with custom action permissions on vista with MSI installation.

[tamiroff]

Hi,

we have basic msi EXE installation with vbscript custom actions on execute sequence before InstallInitialize. the script in the custom action is writing to HKLM/software/company/product key.

we set "required execution level" to "administrator" and the installation works fine.

Recently we needed to covert the installation to *.MSI file.
This caused the vbscript custom action to get "Access is denied" Error when we are installing on vista and win7 machines. it looks like even though we get the message of UAC to allow the installation to get administrative privileges, the custom action doesn't get this permission.

we are running the installation with administrator user.

I saw a solution to make the custom action as deferred. but we can not move the action after InstallInitialize (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2006/12/13/some-useful-things-i-have-learned-about-windows-installer-and-uac.aspx) so we are in a deadlock....

any ideas?
Thanks.

[gbaltazar]

Try running your MSI from an administrator command prompt. Just being an administrator user may not be enough.

[rrinblue22]

I think you would need to have your custom action in deferred mode to make an system changes with elevated permissions on Vista/Win 7.