Software Deployment

Which product are you working on?

This really speaks to our discussion earlier this week about nested MSIs and why vendors and repackagers should never use them. They're almost impossible to get working properly. Microsoft says not to use them and that should be reason enough not to.

hi raka1903

what product are you using

I successfully created a nested msi vendor+ main msi using custom actions in wise package studio and it worked with no problems

the only draw back is the embedded msi will not be able to SELF REPAIR

if you are using wise package studio then check the altiris website knowledge base altiris and type in nested msi and look for article 2955

also have a look at creating nested msi packages using ORCA and the drawbacks nested msi + orca
can you confirm that you are using Wise custom action ( install msi from relative path) if not let us know

do you have a vendors msi or are you repackaging and nesting 2 msi's
be specific with what you want to achieve

hope this will give you some good leads

Hi rana,
please give us some more information about this.
Is it a vendor package?
How is the nested MSI called (custom action type, command line)?
Have you tried to add a source with the SOURCELIST property?
Is the child MSI proper authored (validation)?

Regards, Nick

the application is Microsoft Project Professional 2007, i created a transform and calling the other msi's using install msi from relative path , the application is working fine
but the problem is if i click on setup and repair the application it is not happening
i verified in the registry under installer\products , these msi have no source only blank folder created

Hin rana,
this is bad practice, as others already stated.
Install them separately trough your deployment system. That gives you a lot more flexibility.
Regards, Nick

Hi Raka:

I would agree with the community here, pls do not create a nested MSI as it has disadvantages over the individual way of deploying packages. However as you said that your other MSI is getting called but not getting repaired its because of the fact that its not able to create a key entry point which an MSI needs to repair itself.

Refer this article (Click Here)

But if it's a requirement then go ahead and create the nested installation, if you need to create a entry in the registry above then create a Script or an action that does this but again it would not be recommended to play with the package

As this is an Office product we are talking about here, you might also want to consider using a chained installation - documentation to be found here

Note that you cannot use the Office Customization Wizard itself to install other MSI's in a nested fashion - (at least that used to be the case with Office XP)

Instead, the above method relies on adding chained settings into the Office product's setup.ini, which are then read by setup.exe.

Spartacus

Hi raka,

I`m not sure it it's a good package to be repackage, based on our friends post, it isn't. However, just to provide the correct self-heal you just need to create a registry key like this one

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\9EC9653600AFC964FAC55E4D9DA3FC19\SourceList\Net
StringName=1
Valeu=MSI Path

Regards,
Marcelo