Nested Installs

Title

Nested Installs

Summary

Information regarding Nested Installs.

Synopsis

This article will discuss the problems with using Nested Installations and the best practices as suggested by Microsoft.

Discussion

When attempting to use an MSI installer to launch a secondary MSI installer, this is called a Nested Install (also called Concurrent Installations).

Microsoft has deprecated this feature of Windows Installer and recommends that you avoid using nested installations and nested-installation custom actions to install products that are intended to be released to the public.

Applications installed with nested installations sometimes fail because they are difficult for end users to service correctly. Some of the problems encountered when authoring concurrent installations are:

Concurrent installations cannot share components.
An administrative installation cannot also contain a concurrent installation.
Patching and upgrading may not work with concurrent installations.
The installer may not properly cost a concurrent installation.
Integrated ProgressBars cannot be used with concurrent installations.
Resources that are to be advertised cannot be installed by the concurrent installation.
A package that performs a concurrent installation of an application should also uninstall the concurrent application when the parent product is uninstalled.

Workaround

Rather than using Nested Installations, it is recommended that secondary applications that need to be installed with your application use either Prerequisites or Chained MSI's

Nested Installations can have limited applicability within Corporate Environments when applications are not intended for public release.

In these cases a nested install can be launched using a custom action.

It should be noted that two instances of the Windows Installer Execute Sequence cannot run at the same time, this limits a nested install custom action to only be placed within the User Interface Sequence.

Additional Information

Information on Nested Installs can be found on the following Microsoft Webpage:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368010(v=vs.85).aspx

Information on creating Prerequisites can be found here:

http://helpnet.installshield.com/installshield21helplib/helplibrary/IHelpMergeModules.htm#organizingfiles_2971526177_1037273

Information on Chained MSI's:
http://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/installshield21helplib/helplibrary/ChainerAdding.htm

Windows Installer Execute Sequence:

http://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/installshield21helplib/helplibrary/IHelpSeqExecute.htm

Windows Installer User Interface Sequence:

http://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/installshield21helplib/helplibrary/IHelpSeqUI.htm

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Case id: 00001065