Software Deployment

Is there some reason why you couldn't look these things up in Google? Or here on AppDeploy? For example, a link to a good article about AS was posted just this week.

This sounds like a list for the interview question thread!

1. I have a MSI which has Active setup, MSI is installed and i loggedoff and loggedin to machine and active setup runs, now i uninstall the MSI and reinstall it, then how the active setup works for that user?

If active setup already ran for this particular user it wont run again because the HKCU keys will exist for that user. If it's a new user then it will run
http://www.etlengineering.com/installer/activesetup.txt

why don't you test it and find out for yourself!

2. What is companion file and its usage?

I've never used this and not sure why you would but the information is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa367997%28VS.85%29.aspx

basically the companion file uses the file versioning of is parent.

4) what is msirebootcontrolmanager?

no idea

5) What is SetAPI.dll?
it's a dll

6) During installation each user should be promted with a license key is this possible?

Why would you want to do this? Why not add it to the package?
if it's an app that's registered per machine (dependant on mac address for example) then you'll probably have to open up permissions to certain areas to allow users to register the product on first run.

no idea Correction, Timmster. Your reply should have been "No idea, but I know somewhere where I could find out in under half a second."

True, this tinterwebs a wonderful thing! It'll never catch on though!

Hi,

these questions are raised by one of my team mate. I am really not able to find what is msirebootcontrolmanager either in appdeploy and google.

and license question the license may be per users. each user might need his/her own license to work on application. in that case it would be good if we get the license for each user during first launch of the application i thought. please correct me if i am wrong.

Many Thanks.

Ani, if you're going to continue in the suport environment, you need to:
- remember that users - and especially senior management users (I have the unerring feeling that the questions were asked by someone in this group who has speed-read some article) - are basically pig-ignorant;
- think laterally.

What do I mean? Take 'msirebootcontrolmanager'. Entering that word into Google - as you found - produces nothing of value. However, entering 'msi reboot manager' produces hits for 'MSI Restart Manager', such as this one here. In that article, some of the links are to other MSDN articles which have moved but entering the word used as the link into the search box on that page will turn up the information you need.

As for licensing, I'm trying to think of a single license I've encountered which was per-user, other than multi-user type licenses but these are generally controlled by a license manager (e.g. FlexNet). Most licenses are per-machine. However, if that's the requirement and you need it triggered on application start-up, you'll need to engineer a user-level feature as a child of an existing feature which has an advertised entry-point, normally a shortcut. Alternatively, you could use ActiveSetup.

How you handle the recording of the license depends entirely on the application. For example, some apps record that information in the registry, some in a file; Some encrypted, some not. Some controlled by the main EXE, some by a separate EXE.

senior management users pig-ignorant

Can't believe that for a second [:D]