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I know from here that creating the property MSIFASTINSTALL to 1 will disable restore point creation during that msi installation. But this property is supported only Windows Installer 5.0 onwards. However, I cannot guarantee 5.0 will always be present on the system. Is there some other way I can do the same thing on lower version of Windows Installer? I don't mind using a Custom Action if needed.

Thank you.

sohil
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2 Answers2

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Don't disable system restore with a custom action - it may fail to put it back on and you have a huge deployment bug that will really freak out system administrators everywhere.

I assume what you are looking for is a faster setup installation? You can find some tips on speeding up MSI installations on serverfault.com. The DISABLEROLLBACK property seems to be available on MSI 4.

Community
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Stein Åsmul
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    Agreed, in this case it's not the job of the install to do a system-wide change to restore points - that's the user's decision. – PhilDW Jun 12 '14 at 16:55
  • Yes, and worse yet: the whole software may be rejected by a company's IT department because of such constructs. Don't underestimate the importance of proper deployment and system administration: http://stackoverflow.com/a/22737069/129130 – Stein Åsmul Jun 12 '14 at 18:32
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    I do not want to disable system restore system-wide; only for my own msi - which is what the property I had mentioned does. – sohil Jun 13 '14 at 08:11
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    Setting DISABLEROLLBACK would cause problems in case of installation failure - leaving me no easy way to undo changes done by the installer in case of failure. The restore point however is not used by the installer ever. – sohil Jun 13 '14 at 08:18
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Please see: System Restore Points and the Windows Installer

On Windows XP, the installer may create checkpoints during the first installation of an application, and during its removal. The installer only creates checkpoints in these cases when the change is run with at least a basic UI. Installations having the user interface level set to None are usually initiated by the system or an application that should handle creating a checkpoint. For more information, see System Restore.

Christopher Painter
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  • I had read this article before posting and confirmed that system restore points are not created in case the installation is run silently. Looking for a way I can do the same for my msi in case it is installed with UI. – sohil Jun 13 '14 at 08:16