What's New in Windows Installer 4.5

The information in this topic identifies the additions and changes that are available in Windows Installer 4.5.

Windows Installer 4.5 will be available as a redistributable for Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and later, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and later. For a complete list of all Windows Installer versions and redistributables, see Released Versions of Windows Installer.

This page is provided as a guide to the documentation. You should refer to the Requirements section on the main reference pages to determine the actual operating system requirements. Parts of the Windows Installer that are not linked to from this page may be available in another version of the Windows Installer. For information about other Windows Installer versions, see What's New in Windows Installer.

Installer Functions

Properties

Database Tables

Custom Action Patch Uninstall Option

  • msidbCustomActionTypePatchUninstall

System Policy

Callback Function Prototypes

Internal Consistency Evaluators - ICEs

  • ICE39 posts a warning if the Word Count Summary Property specifies that the package is UAC compliant and the MsiPackageCertificate Table is not empty.
  • ICE92 verifies no component has both the msidbComponentAttributesPermanent and msidbComponentAttributesUninstallOnSupersedence attributes.
  • ICE100 checks the authoring of the MsiEmbeddedUI table and the MsiEmbeddedChainer table.

Notes

Windows Installer can perform multiple-package installations using transaction processing.

In earlier versions of the installer, small updates and minor upgrades can fail when using the EnforceUpgradeComponentRules policy or MSIENFORCEUPGRADECOMPONENTRULES property because the update removes a component. The component can be removed correctly in these cases by using Windows Installer 4.5 and setting the msidbComponentAttributesUninstallOnSupersedence attribute in the Component table or by setting the MSIUNINSTALLSUPERSEDEDCOMPONENTS property.

Beginning with Windows Installer 4.5 a custom user interface can be embedded within the Windows Installer package. For an example of an embedded custom UI see Using an Embedded UI.

Build date: 6/5/2008