Lessmsi provides a command line as well as interactive application for retrieving any attribute from the .msi. Interactively, open the .msi then go to Table view and select or type “Property”. However while this gives the property names it doesn’t give the valid values for said property.(Or I haven’t discovered the right place to look.) … Read more
Quick Summary Need-for-speed properties to tweak: MSIFASTINSTALL (try it, maybe 3 or 7) FASTOEM (think twice, must read documentation) DISABLEROLLBACK (understand what it means, can cause custom actions in MSI package to fail to run! It depends on the MSI design – look for commit- and rollback custom actions) Security software can be suspended to … Read more
The type of tool you’re looking for is called an Application Repackaging tool. The process would include capturing an installation (take a machine snapshot, run your installation and make customisations, then run a second snapshot to calculate the differences) then compiling the captured data into MSI format. The following are some free tools to perform … Read more
You can run the installer in verbose logging mode msiexec /i product.msi /l*v log.txt Then look for changes to ADDLOCAL property in the log. Thus you will be able to determine which features are installed with the above selection in the GUI. Otherwise, you can use Orca as suggested by jscott and analyze the package … Read more
UPDATE: Try this stackoverflow.com answer instead: How can I find the product GUID of an installed MSI setup? or even this one: Find GUID From MSI File . The Windows SDK tool Orca will allow you to open and view all tables in an MSI file. Once you have the MSI open, you can either … Read more
You’re seeing the dreaded scourge of asynchronous policy processing. It’s not a “feature” (and was default-off in Windows 2000 but default-on in Windows XP and above) and causes exactly what you’re seeing– non-deterministic behaviour with processing some types of GPO settings. In a GPO that applies to that computer, add the following setting: Computer Settings … Read more
Just a few benefits: Can be advertised (so that on demand installation could take place). Like advertisement, features can be installed as soon as the user tries to use them. State management is maintained so Windows Installer provides a way to let administrators see if an application is installed on a machine. Ability to roll … Read more