Hello AI team, I first want to say that I have been thoroughly impressed with your software so far!
I am currently working on creating a suite installer using AI, and have followed your tutorials online. Right now, the suite installer indeed works and installs up to two programs, but I have ran into an issue that I have troubleshot to no avail. As suggested by your tutorials, I am not registering the suite installer itself with Windows Installer. During the initial installation process, each application’s installer is being ran silently to streamline the installation process. However, I want the end user to be able to run the suite installer again if they need to modify, repair, or uninstall any of the installed applications.
Issues:
- Since I have not registered the suite installer with Windows Installer, re-running the installer simply leads to re-downloading the individual apps as if it is the initial installation process every time.
- By choosing to have the individual pre-requisites be installed silently, re-running the Suite installer means that the maintenance dialog sequence will never pop up, thus I cannot modify/repair the individual installers.
- This can be resolved by simply setting the pre-requisites to use the "Full UI" level, but I do not want any UI for the installers during the initial install. I basically only want the "full UI" level to be triggered if they are re-running the suite installer, which would allow them to modify/repair the individual apps.
I have searched everywhere for a solution to this problem, but I want to ensure that it can be solved before I purchase the enterprise version of Advanced Installer.
TL;DR - I want to make a suite installer that installs multiple applications with no UI during the initial installation but allows you to modify or repair the individual installations later when running the suite installer again. Thanks for any aid you can provide! - Joseph
Suggested Articles
Re: Change UI Level based on Install Type
Hello Joseph and welcome to our forums,
I think all the problems here come from the fact that your main package is not registered with Windows Instlaler.
First of all, you can not enter Maintenance from Control Panel, as the "main" is not appearing over there.
Secondly, when relaunching the setup, it will not enter Maintenance Mode as once again, the product is not registered.
Hope this helps!
Best regards,
Catalin
I think all the problems here come from the fact that your main package is not registered with Windows Instlaler.
First of all, you can not enter Maintenance from Control Panel, as the "main" is not appearing over there.
Secondly, when relaunching the setup, it will not enter Maintenance Mode as once again, the product is not registered.
- Screenshot_176.png (11.75 KiB) Viewed 8521 times
Regarding this, if I understand it correctly - i.e. you expect that when you launch the main installer, each prerequisite to be then launched in Maintenance Mode - then I'm afraid that is not possible.but allows you to modify or repair the individual installations later when running the suite installer again.
Hope this helps!
Best regards,
Catalin
Re: Change UI Level based on Install Type
Catalin,
Thank you for the quick and helpful reply! I am afraid that I confused not registering the installer with Windows installer with it not showing up in the apps & programs section. I had no idea you could continue registering it and just tick the "do not show in list" option to prevent the suite installer from showing in programs. Very nice
Now, I am able to open the suite installer in maintenance mode and perform the necessary tasks. However, I still have a question regarding the best approach for allowing users to open each individual installer in maintenance mode. Would it be to make the prerequisites open in Full UI mode, and just make the first-time installs for each prerequisite be as simple as possible, so that when first installing software the suite installer does not contain so many dialogs? Thus, users re-launching the suite installer will display the full UI that is necessary for maintenance?
From your previous reply, it seems that dynamically changing the UI level for first-time installs versus maintenance mode for the individual installers might not be possible? I found another page on your website (https://www.advancedinstaller.com/user- ... -page.html) that made it seem like they were modifying the UI level for the individual MSI's based on the installation state (maintenance/install/uninstall). However, I had no success using the UILevel = 5 condition that the screenshot had - what exactly is that line even doing considering that it's a condition?
Thank you for your assistance!
Regards,
Joseph
Thank you for the quick and helpful reply! I am afraid that I confused not registering the installer with Windows installer with it not showing up in the apps & programs section. I had no idea you could continue registering it and just tick the "do not show in list" option to prevent the suite installer from showing in programs. Very nice
Now, I am able to open the suite installer in maintenance mode and perform the necessary tasks. However, I still have a question regarding the best approach for allowing users to open each individual installer in maintenance mode. Would it be to make the prerequisites open in Full UI mode, and just make the first-time installs for each prerequisite be as simple as possible, so that when first installing software the suite installer does not contain so many dialogs? Thus, users re-launching the suite installer will display the full UI that is necessary for maintenance?
From your previous reply, it seems that dynamically changing the UI level for first-time installs versus maintenance mode for the individual installers might not be possible? I found another page on your website (https://www.advancedinstaller.com/user- ... -page.html) that made it seem like they were modifying the UI level for the individual MSI's based on the installation state (maintenance/install/uninstall). However, I had no success using the UILevel = 5 condition that the screenshot had - what exactly is that line even doing considering that it's a condition?
Thank you for your assistance!
Regards,
Joseph
Re: Change UI Level based on Install Type
Hello Joseph,
And indeed, we can just do that.
Regarding what you are trying to achieve, I'm afraid it might not be possible, at least not with the current support from Windows Installer.
It might be possible with some hardcore configurations (e.g. creating your own dialog on Maintenance), but I do not think this is worth it - once again, I'm saying it might because I just tried it now to see whether I can create a sample to help you, but I did not manage to do so.
First of all, we do not even display the main package in the Control Panel, which is the most common place where customers start the Maintenance (I'm pretty sure most customers remove the setups after installation and therefore these customers will not have the posibility to launch the main setp in Maintenance).
Addiitonally, each setup is added in the Control Panel so that it can be modified separately (or at least this is the default logic behind this option).
In the end, the same thing happens - we just have some additional steps in the main package where the user selects which package to modify and then launch them each separately, one after another (this would of course be if we could somehow achieve it).
I'm sorry I wasn't quite able to fully assist you here.
Please let me know if there is anything else I could help you with and I will gladly do so.
Best regards,
Catalin
You are always welcome!Thank you for the quick and helpful reply! I am afraid that I confused not registering the installer with Windows installer with it not showing up in the apps & programs section. I had no idea you could continue registering it and just tick the "do not show in list" option to prevent the suite installer from showing in programs. Very nice
And indeed, we can just do that.
Regarding what you are trying to achieve, I'm afraid it might not be possible, at least not with the current support from Windows Installer.
It might be possible with some hardcore configurations (e.g. creating your own dialog on Maintenance), but I do not think this is worth it - once again, I'm saying it might because I just tried it now to see whether I can create a sample to help you, but I did not manage to do so.
First of all, we do not even display the main package in the Control Panel, which is the most common place where customers start the Maintenance (I'm pretty sure most customers remove the setups after installation and therefore these customers will not have the posibility to launch the main setp in Maintenance).
Addiitonally, each setup is added in the Control Panel so that it can be modified separately (or at least this is the default logic behind this option).
In the end, the same thing happens - we just have some additional steps in the main package where the user selects which package to modify and then launch them each separately, one after another (this would of course be if we could somehow achieve it).
I'm sorry I wasn't quite able to fully assist you here.
Please let me know if there is anything else I could help you with and I will gladly do so.
Best regards,
Catalin