How to interactive a silently installing msi? (Progress data and cancel it)

Question

For some reason, we are delivering a product with our own install GUI, that means, we will run the msi installation silently background.

By using the MSI API "MsiInstallProduct", I can install the product silently, but I have no idea how can I get the progress data of this installation and how can I cancel it.

Anyone has some ideas?

Solution 1

Here is a sample project that appears to do what you are referring to: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/msiinterop.aspx

Solution 2

UPDATE June 2018: Although the tool shown below is no longer available for download, I found it via Wayback machine. I assume it is OK and legal to link to it, seeing as the tool was freeware. Updated links below.

UPDATE: This tool from Wise is regrettably not downloadable anymore. I am not sure if it is OK to distribute it either. It seemed to be a free tool distributed as part of their main Wise Package Studio suite, but I don't think it is open source. I wish they would release it as an open source tool.

The Wise packaging products have been discontinued due to a number of legal issues.

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I believe you can get the progress via the MSI API, but if I were you I would just show the progress bar from the MSI itself after invoking the install via msiexec.exe.

MSI supports several different installation levels (full, completely silent, basic GUI, reduced GUI etc...). In your case it sounds like you want a basic UI. This yields a progress bar where you can hide the cancel button, and optionally show a completion modal dialog:

Install silently with progress bar, no cancel button and no modal dialog at end:

msiexec.exe /I "Test.msi" /QB-!

To avoid having to construct these silly msiexec command lines manually, use the msi command line builder tool from Wise: http://www2.wise.com/filelib/WICLB.exe (resurrected from Wayback machine).

Please run the download by virustotal.com for safety.

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Related:

• installation using msi.exec open help options every time
• Silent Install of MSI
• How to install an MSI package from a command prompt
• How do I force the Windows MSI installer to perform a complete install?
• Silent Installer with custom selection

Solution 3

You need to specify an external UI handler using MsiSetExternalUI or MsiSetExternalUIRecord before MsiInstallProduct (the latter is nicer, but has a higher MSI version requirement). The function you specify will be called for each message Windows Installer wants you to process. This will give you the data, and a chance to respond tell it to cancel. If you require MSI 4.5 or later, you can use an embedded external UI handler DLL, which does not require a bootstrap.

Comments

[redjackwong]

I will get you a vote but not for my answer. We are not using the msi GUI because it's not fit our product's style, so we are provide a cooler progress bar for it, all I need is the progress data to set our bar. The msi's basic GUI is not acceptable. And I still cannot cancel it from pure API right?

[Stein Åsmul]

Here is a sample of how to work with MSI billboards and progress bar: sourceforge.net/projects/msiprogramming . If this isn't what you need, perhaps look through the resources at: installsite.org

[Stein Åsmul]

Remember to click the "view all files" button (otherwise you get only a demo).