I have been granted a license to distribute the Adobe Flash Player 10 with my windows app. However, I am looking for the cleanest and most efficient way to distribute it. The installer is offered in both EXE and MSI formats (and I could also direct them to the web to install).
I've read that one MSI cannot call another MSI and that a bootstrapper is required for VS 2005 setup projects. That seems like a sloppy end-user experience. The exe could be launched as a process, but I'm not sure how best to code that into the setup and wait until the process ends.
Does anyone have experience incorporating the Flashplayer distribution with their Windows Apps? And if so, do you have any suggestions for the best user experience?
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
I was hoping to run the msi silently using something like msiexec and the /qn command line parameter... however, I cannot run that from a CustomAction within another msi. So, It appears I am stuck using the Bootstrapper Manifest Generator and a package manifest for the flash msi. This will run, but will not silently.
Are there any other options?
Ah, you want to make this prerequisite for your own package, I see.
This question had been asked here many times, and most agree on the following: include their installation with your media either as MSI itself, or as a link to their site; in your installation, do system search, and if you don't find Flash, tell the user that he needs to install it by doing this and that.
Still, you can try nested installation by creating custom action "install MSI". I'm afraid though you won't get very far, since nested installations are quite shaky. Especially if you are going to deploy to outside users.
(I don't know what msi authoring tool you have, and whether it supports custom actions and system search).
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: vadimrapp1Posted on 2008-11-11 at 05:58:06ID: 22930301
The experience of installing installations made by Adobe clearly says that they are so illiterate that for thorough solution they need to be repackaged. That's what I have been doing for Reader since Reader 6. If you read recommendations, you will find that repackaging MSI is not recommended and instead transform should be applied; but these recommendations always assume that the MSI is good, which is not the case more often than it is. Including by the way Microsoft's own packages.
That said, I don't quite understand your problem. You've got MSI from them, which supposedly would install the product so why "MSI cannot call another MSI"? why the need to call one MSI from another?