Editing an exe & Uninstall exe to MSI

[IKWeb]

Hello All
I am new here, just trying out a trial version to make sure the software does what I need it to do before I buy the licence. Of the back of some testing, I have 2 questions if anyone could help me with.

1) When I do an EXE to MSI app it installs fine - when I come to uninstall it and use the command msiexec /x {product code} it fails uninstall and says its not a valid option. I assume this is due to the fact it started out life as an exe - do I have any way to fix this, or is this something I have to work around given I generated the MSI from an EXE?

2) I have an exe file that the developers decided in their wisdom to specify the install directory as the users local profile - I would like to change this to be something a little better like the C:\Program Files\AppName
Can you edit an exe file with Advanced Installer, or is this something that can't be done?

Many Thanks

[Catalin]

Hello and welcome to our forums,

1) When I do an EXE to MSI app it installs fine - when I come to uninstall it and use the command msiexec /x {product code} it fails uninstall and says its not a valid option. I assume this is due to the fact it started out life as an exe - do I have any way to fix this, or is this something I have to work around given I generated the MSI from an EXE?

Here, if you have used the Exe to MSI wizard, it is possible that you have disabled the "Show MSI information" option:

Screenshot_113.png (25.26 KiB) Viewed 4784 times

Basically, how this wizard works is that it adds the EXE as a prerequisite and creates an MSI bootstrapper over the EXE. Behind the scenes, the EXE is still installed by itself.

By disabling that option, we prevent the MSI from also appearing in the Control Panel (remember, the EXE is installed by itself) - we basically avoid duplicate entries.

2) I have an exe file that the developers decided in their wisdom to specify the install directory as the users local profile - I would like to change this to be something a little better like the C:\Program Files\AppName
Can you edit an exe file with Advanced Installer, or is this something that can't be done?

Considering the above as well, I would suggest that you try to convert your EXE to an MSI through our Repackager tool.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,
Catalin