aweber
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2018 7:45 pm

file associations on per-user install

I saw in this thread that it wasn't available as of 7 years ago. I'm hoping this has changed and AI now allows us to perform file associations during a per-user/current-user install?

viewtopic.php?t=34599

This is performed in the HKCU hive (in one or two places), and would be highly beneficial to us!

Thanks
Catalin
Posts: 7014
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: file associations on per-user install

Hello,

Did you test this and encounter any issues?

I have just tested a per-user only installation with a file association added in the MSI and it worked just fine - I did not encounter any issues during the installation.

Best regards,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
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aweber
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2018 7:45 pm

Re: file associations on per-user install

If you are an Administrator (or maybe even "Power User") on the PC, it will succeed. If you are only allowed to write to HKCU, it will likely fail.

To be clear, I did not try it yet, because that test will be difficult to setup other than using a Production/client-target PC, which I am reluctant to do.
Catalin
Posts: 7014
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: file associations on per-user install

Hello,

Mhm, quite strange.

I have tested this as an admin user, indeed, but the installation was per-user and therefore it did not write to HKLM (otherwise, it would have requested admin rights).

I will try to test this from a normal user account and will report back - although I'm not sure it matters here as the setup already would request admin rights if it were to write to HKLM hive.

Best regards,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
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aweber
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2018 7:45 pm

Re: file associations on per-user install

Thank you for testing. The referenced link is, as mentioned, a few years old, but I didn't find any mention that this functionality was updated.
Catalin
Posts: 7014
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: file associations on per-user install

Hello,
The referenced link is, as mentioned, a few years old, but I didn't find any mention that this functionality was updated.
You are indeed right about this and that's exactly why I tested this. :D

I have now tested this from a normal user account as well and I can confirm that this works - you are not prompted for admin rights and you aren't given any errors during the installation as long as your installation type is set to "per-user only".
Screenshot_208.png
Screenshot_208.png (15.42 KiB) Viewed 1206 times

As we can see in the above screenshot, the .ext is associated with my EXE, as expected.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
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aweber
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2018 7:45 pm

Re: file associations on per-user install

Thank you very much for testing. I wonder when this feature/enhancement was added to the product?

Do you have an easy way to search release notes?

Thanks again!
Catalin
Posts: 7014
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: file associations on per-user install

You are always welcome! :)
I wonder when this feature/enhancement was added to the product?

Do you have an easy way to search release notes?
Unfortunately, I'm not so sure when this was improved either - I have tried to have a look over our bug tracking tool and couldn't really find anything there.

It is possible that his has been an OS limitation that was fixed in the meantime as well.

Bottom line is, we should be happy that it works now. :)

Best regards,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
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