Stopping display of custom dialog boxes in WiX uninstall

installationwix

I have a WiX installer project that utilises a custom dialog box to ask for parameters to update a web.config file and run a database script on install. Everything works correctly and the application is installed and runs correctly.

However, the custom dialog box is also displayed when I uninstall the software and it certainly doesn't need to be (as I'm not updating a web.config file).

Is there a way to suppress the custom dialog when the application is being uninstalled?

(I should also remove the sql procs I install, at uninstall time but that is outside of this issue).

Best Answer

The solution to your question is to condition the custom action with the condition (Not REMOVE="ALL"). This will make the action run on fresh install and maintenance install, but not on uninstall. If you don't need to run on maintenance install, but only on a fresh install you can set the condition to be: (Not Installed AND Not(REMOVE="ALL")). Full list of MSI properties and brief descriptions here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370905(VS.85).aspx.

The sequencing and custom action logic in MSI files is VERY complicated. It really pays off to avoid custom actions whenever you can.

There is more - all MSI files have built-in support for silent installation. This means that the entire GUI sequence can be skipped, and the MSI file installed without user interaction. This is a crucial feature for corporate deployment via SMS / SCCM or other deployment mechanisms. Showing a custom dialog box when the setup is run in silent mode is a violation of this basic MSI feature. You can work around this by properly conditioning the display of the dialog based on the property UILevel: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa372096(VS.85).aspx. Just to keep things interesting and confusing Microsoft has defined 4 levels of GUI during an installation ranging from completely silent, through various options such as progress bar only etc... See the link for details.

I could add a lot of details here about MSI sequences, conditions, custom actions and similar, but it wouldn't answer your question. Please add any follow-up questions.

Related Solutions

How to create a custom dialog in WiX for user input

Have fun with UI!

Edit: The original link to answer doesn't exist anymore. FireGiant (the maintainers of Wix) some examples for part of this process, but it's doesn't completely answer this question. There is one further tutorial (UPDATE Aug.2018: Link resurrected from Wayback Machine) that does go most of the way to answer this question.

A high level overview of what will be happening is:

Create a property
Have the UI control set this property
The name attribute on the service will reference the property, ie [ServiceNameProperty].

However this is complex, and the way that is suggested to create a new UI dialog, is to take an existing dialog, make a clone of it, and then edit with new text, controls and use it to populate the property.

Wix Custom Action only on uninstall

Your best bet is to tie the action of the custom action to the action state of the Component.

<InstallExecuteSequence>
   <Custom Action="UninstallService">$ProductComponent=2</Custom>
   <Custom Action="InstallService">$ProductComponent=3</Custom>
</InstallExecuteSequence>

Also, you're going to need your CustomAction elements to be Execute='deferred'.

Also, text in the CustomAction element is only allowed if you're creating a script custom action. It doesn't seem like that's what you are doing.

Adding custom actions requires quite a bit of understanding. It is unfortunate that a 3rd party platform would force you to use custom actions.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to create a custom dialog in WiX for user input

Wix Custom Action only on uninstall

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