WiX installer: Installing to Appdata - Error ICE38, ICE64 & ICE91

Question

I've been banging my head against this one for a while and I've finally caved (after a lot of searching) and have come to stack overflow for help.

As the title suggests I am trying to create an installer that can carry out a per-user install without requiring any elevated permissions.

However the following code generates a lot of ICE38 and ICE64 errors, as well as ICE91 warnings at compile time.

    <Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir">
      <Directory Id="AppDataFolder">
        <Directory Id="AppRootDirectory" Name="[Manufacturer]">
          <Directory Id="INSTALLFOLDER" Name="[ProductName]" />
        </Directory>
      </Directory>
    </Directory>

    <Feature Id="ProductFeature" Title="ATestProject" Level="1">
      <ComponentGroupRef Id="modules" />
    </Feature>

"modules" refers to the contents of a heat.exe generated .wxs file whose components install directory is "INSTALLFOLDER"

The solutions available on the internet indicate a lot of editing of my modules.wxs file in order to get this to work, this is not acceptable - There are well over 1000 files in this release process and anything that cannot be automated (done on the command line at build time or with a script) is entirely out of the question.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can set up a per-user install that, by default on windows 7 and later, installs to %localappdata%\Programs by doing the following;

<Property Id="ALLUSERS" Secure="yes" Value="2"/>
<Property Id="MSIINSTALLPERUSER" Secure="yes" Value="1" />

<Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir">
  <Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder">
    <Directory Id="AppRootDirectory" Name="Manufacturer">
      <Directory Id="INSTALLFOLDER" Name="ProductName" />
    </Directory>
  </Directory>
</Directory>
<!-- ... -->
<!-- ... -->
<Feature Id="ProductFeature" Title="ATestProject" Level="0">
  <ComponentGroupRef Id="modules" />
</Feature>

Basically Setting the two properties at the top configures the installer to a "per user" install, which is UAC friendly and does not need elevated permissions. See This for a detailed explanation.

Please also note that ProgramFilesFolder becomes %localAppData%/programs - Microsoft's default storage place for per-user applications and installing to a users profile rather than C:\Program Files (x86)\