Software Deployment

1) Set the Value column field to 1 for the Registry table entries: RegKey046 & RegKey047

2.a) Prevent the C_SetDefaultBrowser & C_SetDefaultBrowserXP component from being installed by setting a condition that always resolves to false
2.b) Or use a condition of "SET_AS_DEFAULT_BROWSER = 1" so you can choose to have Firefox as the default browser by using SET_AS_DEFAULT_BROWSER=1 on the command line or setting the SET_AS_DEFAULT_BROWSER property to 1.

As the Condition table is missing (used to set condition on feature level) the easiest is to just to set the condition on the two components instead.
Go to the Component table and locate the two components.
For the component
C_SetDefaultBrowser: set the Condition column field value to; SET_AS_DEFAULT_BROWSER=1
C_SetDefaultBrowserXP: set the Condition column field value to; VersionNT>=501 AND SET_AS_DEFAULT_BROWSER=1

When ever you want to set Firefox as the default browser you just set the SET_AS_DEFAULT_BROWSER property to 1 either by command line or in the Property table.

At a guess, I'd say that the Desktop s/c is created by the Custom Action in ExecuteDeferred called 'RefreshDesktopIcons'.

As to the default browser, there is a feature, F_SetDefaultBrowser, containing 2 components: C_SetDefaultBrowserXP and C_SetDefaultBrowser. Set a condition (perhaps controlled by a public property, so that you easily re-enable it at some point) for the feature.

Close on Ian ;)

wow you guys are fast to respond :)

Sorry I havn't done app packaging for about 2 years so please explain option 2.b)

I've tried adding that property and value in Property table but no luck.

Cheers!

That did the job.

Many thanks for your help

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Hi,

Thx for your help so far - I also got a problem concerning the default browser component and tried to disable it by doing the following:

2.a) Prevent the C_SetDefaultBrowser & C_SetDefaultBrowserXP component from being installed by setting a condition that always resolves to false

Thus, I set the condition "VersionNT<501" on both component entries since we are using Win XP and higher.

When I deploy the msi on a clean system, the IE remains the default browser. When deploying the the msi onto a system where there already was a previous or the same version of the firefox-MSI installed once (and is now being uninstalled prior to the new installation), the Firefox becomes the default. This is very bad, since our Users without administrative privileges are not able to make the IE default again without our help.

Could this coincide with the uninstallation procedure?

I am using the microsoft group policy enabled version of the MSI mentioned above (FMFirefoxCE-3.6.8-de.msi by FrontMotion).

Any hint would be very appreciated.

Thx & regards!
Chris

Short update: I could verify that on a system where there is a Firefox (V3.6.3 or V3.6.8) installed and the IE is set to default, after uninstalling the first the IE is no longer default although it is the only one on the system. Doesn't make any sense to me.

"VersionNT<501"Is this a typo? This is the exact opposite of what you require if you want to install on XP and above.

As for resetting the default browser, how would FF set it to anything? It would need to check for every possible browser's presence? What if it encountered two? Or more? If that's the behaviour you want in your environment, you need to plumb it in to your package.

This isn't a typo. I would like to install the FF main files, but not the component(s) which set FF as default browser. Thus, I set the condition to any OS prior to XP, so that it always resolves to false and the components don't get installed.

But as stated before, the main problem is that this MSI obviously changes some registry-keys related to the default browser preferences when it is uninstalled or used for upgrading a previous installation of the FF. At that point, no browser AT ALL ist set as default and users without admin privileges cannot set the IE (or others) default again. This is obviously related to the following:

http://newoldthing.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/how-does-your-browsers-know-that-its-not-the-default-browser/

As a workaround, I disabled the message of the IE saying it is not the default browser (which in fact the normal user cannot get rid of) and made use of this tool (thank you, Ramesh):

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/defaultbrowser.htm

Now, the users are able to set their default browser within their profile context. Unfortunately, the tool doesn't support IE 8 (yet?).

All in all, this solution obviously doesn't seem very appropriate. If you happened to have further advice, I would be grateful.

Thx & regards,
Chris

Chris,

have you tried changing (or removing) the condition on the RestoreIExplore Custom action so it also runs during install? It's a gamble but if you're lucky it might restore IE as default browser.

Rgds,

PJ

Sorry, I am relatively new to this topic...

Using ORCA, I found the RestoreIExplore Custom Action in the CustomAction-Table. But there is no condition-Column on it (only action, type, source and target colums). Where would I look for that?

Thx again very much!

Found it! I will report back after having tested it.

Unfortunately, no luck on this one. At least not with IE 8.0.

I had 3 different approaches:

• Removing the condition on the custom action RestoreIExplore in the InstallExecuteSequence-table
• Changing the default condition Installed and REMOVE~="ALL" to a condition that always resolves to true
• Changing the default condition Installed and REMOVE~="ALL" to a condition that always resolves to false (in case the custom action doesn't work correctly here).

Either way, there is no default browser set after installation when upgrading an existing FF installation or after having previously uninstalled the current MSI. On a clean system with no FF installation ever present, however, this problem doesn't occur.