Advanced Installer startup action

Question

I'm using Advanced Installer professional edition for a small windows application.

I wondering if it is possible to run a custom action when the installer is executed and the product is already installed (and up to date) ?

Usually when you run the installer you either get the "Another version product already installed" message, or nothing happens. From what I understand it's MSI which does this automatically, but I was hoping there would be some way to get around it since Advanced Installer can wrap the MSI in it's own exe-file.

What i would like to do is start the application if it's already installed. I already auto-start the application after the normal installation completes, but I would like the installer to always start the application when run.

Answer 1

The message "Another version product already installed" appears only during development phases, your users will never see this message. More exactly, this message appears when you have installed the product with version 1.0.0, than added one more file to it, rebuilt the MSI and tried to install it again, with the same version 1.0.0.

In this situation you have two packages with different package codes, but the same product code and version, therefore you see the above mentioned package.

Your users will never get the chance to run two different packages with the same version, as they have access to the official release, so they will not see that message.

What they will see is actually the maintenance dialogs, i.e. the options to modify/repair/remove the product.

To launch your application every time they launch the MSI again you can have Launch File or Open URL predefined custom action under the beginning of the InstallUISequence, in Custom Actions page, set to launch your main executable, with the execution condition set to:

Installed

This exact condition will make the custom action to execute only if the application is already installed on the machine.

However, the MSI will not be closed, so the user will still see the maintenance dialogs.