How to disable MSI Windows Installer auto-repair ?

@gabri3l:

I did as you suggested. The Event Log contained the warning messages telling me that "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\..." was not available. Then I copied the Component Id, installed ORCA.MSI from the PlatformSDK, opened the installation MSI and found the Component Id in the component section. But the KeyPath is an empty value. I can't delete anything from it since there is nothing in it. I guess this is since the shortcuts are not already packed into the MSI, but only created at installation time.

Then I tried to remove the whole row. The MSI gave me an internal error when I started it. I searched for other occurences of the Component Id, but I didn't find it anywhere else.

Then I searched for the names of the Start Menu entries and found them in the Shortcuts category. I deleted them all and saved the MSI file and installed the software again. This time I had no shortcuts in my Start Menu. I created a shortcut on my own and started the software. This time I was in an endless loop of "repairing" the "damaged" software. Which I only could stop by "burning" them with LordPE, since my Task manager didn't allow me to terminate the processes.

Then I tried to find some occurences of the files the shortcuts pointed to, but I didn't find anything which I would classify as "this is it" (I don't know much about MSI).

How does the auto-repair feature of MSI file work anyway? If I execute "TEST.EXE", does Windows check if it is a MSI installed application and launch the installer to check it or must "TEST.EXE" call some MSI APIs itself to check if it needs to be repaired?

I bet disabling this would decrease startup time of MSI installed software.

[ee45678]

Try this:

http://desktopengineertraining.com/msirestrictrun

They also have a few other tools for use with MSI files that you may find useful.

[gabri3l]

It's hard to diagnose the problem without the software in front of me, but you can try opening the MSI in orca and selecting the PROPERTY cell on the left hand side. Then in the cells to the right add a new row. In the new row under property type DISABLEADVTSHORTCUTS and set the value cell to 1. Then install the software.

The problem is that when a program using MSI installs it registers itself with Windows Installer Service. The service then controls certain program properties. You cannot stop a certain program from using the Repair option. However, you can disable the service all together by opening up your registry and going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer (you may have to create this folder) and Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value, called "DisableMSI" and set it according to 2 = disabled. Exit your registry, you may need to restart. This will almost definately fix your repairing issues. The only problem you will face is that this disables the MSI service for all applications.

@gabri3l:

Thank you for all your work you invested in my problem. Finally the DISABLEADVTSHORTCUTS trick worked and solved my problem. Now I can open my start menu again without falling off my chair. :-)

@ee45678:

Thank you for the link, but I didn't find anything which would help me in my current situation there. But perhaps I will need it later again.