Many applications keep settings or configurations in files that later get stored in per-user based locations, such as %appdata% or %localappdata% folders.

In this article, we will explore what happens during a Windows Installer registration and what are the repercussions that appear if you don't register your MSI during installation.

Applications often require different types of permissions to operate smoothly - so adding permissions to files, folders, and registry keys is a standard practice in MSI.

As one of the most prominent programming languages in the world, Python is supported by many tools and modules. It is easy to learn and provides a nicely constructed code -- which opens the door for many solutions and endless possibilities.

Ever wonder how an MSI registration ProductID is created?When installing an MSI, it registers on the system with a "strange" ProductID (different from regular ProductIDs) which is sometimes tricky to find. This is particularly challenging when you're trying to locate the package installer by its ProductID.

Scripts have been traditionally used by ISVs to add Custom Actions to their applications and make changes to the environment. They have been present in MSI and App-V packaging formats for ages, while for MSIX, they were introduced and supported about a year after Microsoft announced the MSIX release.

There are situations when you have to know the difference between expense and investment. Within the packaging industry, we know that it is definitely not cheap to package all applications in your organization respecting all quality standards.

MSIX packages are installed by default per-user, and the option to provision per-machine MSIX applications is possible through SCCM - which is not yet available in Task Sequences.

With App-V packages closing to end-of-life (2026), the reality of a transition to MSIX is much closer and many are starting to research the ins and outs of what it entails. Although we now know that MSIX is not an update to MSI, but a completely new technology, there are still some correlations that we'd like to address.

When building a new version of an installation package, you should pay attention not only to adding improvements but also ensuring a seamless upgrade to the old version.

If you have ever wondered how fonts are installed in an MSIX package or if you want to master all MSIX concepts, you landed on the perfect page. In the following article, we’ll see how to add and register fonts so your package will be more impactful.

Automation. A word heavily used around industries, especially the software one. A word that arouses great interest for every manager, service, or business owner.

As a standard, Advanced Installer automatically creates the components when generating the product package. The automatic process respects a strict set of Windows Installer rules, together with a series of best practices we have gathered from our customers during the years.

Every software packaging department has its own rules when it comes to MSI - whether we talk about naming convention (package naming, product naming) or package description and comments.

Lessons I have learned from making many mistakes in my enterprise software packaging newbie (and not only) years.

In our previous MSIX related blog articles, we’ve approached some of the MSIX particularities and different scenarios such as Digital Signing, MSIX Deployment via SCCM, MS-AppInstaller Web Protocol, and Context Menu.

For those new to Windows deployment/management, Windows Installer is Microsoft's solution used for the installation, removal, but also maintenance of software. Windows Installer was released for the first time when Windows 95 came in and has been developed over time since then.

There are multiple package formats used for deploying Windows applications, the most well-known being the MSI – Windows Installer. If you didn't know already, an MSI is a database that can be easily customized through the use of command line parameters or MST transform files.

If you are in the software packaging business, you might have heard of WIX bootstrapper. This was released by Microsoft back in 2004, and it was the first ever open source license project for them.

Sometimes you might end up in a situation when you cannot uninstall a package. We already covered how you can recache an MSI in our user guide. However, we noticed that this might not work for transforms (MSTs) and a different solution is needed.