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Iam strugling with creating ONE-FILE setup for my Windows WPF project, that will run WITHOUT elevated privileges.

The target is to create single executable that can be downloaded from web and simply installed, even for standard Windows user.

The instalation goes to {user}\appdata\local, so it does not need elevated privileges to install. It should work similarly to Chrome installation. It should not ask user to unzip to temporary directory and to run setup from there again.

What I have already tried:

  1. I have downloaded VS extension VS Installer Projects and created project. It works fine, it creates setup.exe and corresponding MSI file. Using msiinfo.exe -w 10 I can set the MSI to be installed without elevated privileges. Everything works OK,the only problem is that it creates TWO files.

  2. Then I downloaded MSI2EXE convertor https://www.imelfin.com/convert-msi-to-exe.html It works fine, the result is SETUP.EXE, that contains MSI internally. But it REQUIRES elevated privileges to run.

I have not found a way how to create ONE-FILE setup executable that can be installed WITHOUT elevated privileges.

Thanks for help.

sinoroc
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Milan Švec
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  • Short on time, but [maybe try to skim this](https://stackoverflow.com/a/50229840/129130) - the section on various tools some way down the page (also non-MSI). [Alternative answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/49632260/129130). You should be able to use a WiX Burn bundle, or perhaps the free features of Advanced Installer (easier to use). Please note that unless you have a lot of prerequisites I would just use the MSI directly - single file installer. It is after all the standard format for MSI. The .NET framework is on most systems these days and a launch condition could abort if it is missing. – Stein Åsmul Dec 29 '20 at 04:29
  • And [an attempted answer on multi-platform installers](https://stackoverflow.com/a/51624645/129130). Not 100% what you ask, but some links. My 2 cents, try Advanced Installer first. – Stein Åsmul Dec 29 '20 at 04:31
  • The Windows Installer(MSI) will generate two files, but only the `.msi` file is needed when installing the software. – 大陸北方網友 Dec 30 '20 at 02:18

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