The question of dialogs in custom actions has come up in the past and the advice from the people in the know is to use MSI UI to do the GUI parts so that UI fits in properly with the rest of the system. The UI can pass the data input to a later CA or call doAction CAs itself e.g. the dialog will respect the UI level and be launched in the correct context.
If a MSI dialog is not sufficiently flexible for your needs then you would use an external UI. -----Original Message----- From: Hoover, Jacob [mailto:jacob.hoo...@greenheck.com] Sent: 10 August 2012 14:57 To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] C++ Custom Action Dialogs If I had to guess you need to use a combination of AfxGetStaticModuleState (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc6feexs(v=vs.80).aspx) , AfxSetResourceHandle ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d8ws31ff%28VS.80%29.aspx) and AfxGetResourceHandle (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/zaewt3xs(v=vs.80) ). Any more than that and I'd suggest using your favorite search engine to get your export working outside the scope of Windows installer. -----Original Message----- From: Natalie Carr [mailto:natalie.c...@measuresoft.com] Sent: Friday, August 10, 2012 4:07 AM To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.' Subject: Re: [WiX-users] C++ Custom Action Dialogs Hi, Do you mean to add a WIX dialog for the key in the MSI? Do you know of any tutorials to help me with this as I'm getting "Debug Assertion Failed" on: ASSERT(m_lpszTemplateName != NULL || m_hDialogTemplate != NULL || m_lpDialogTemplate != NULL); Thanks Natalie -----Original Message----- From: Hoover, Jacob [mailto:jacob.hoo...@greenheck.com] Sent: 09 August 2012 19:22 To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] C++ Custom Action Dialogs I hope you aren't under the illusion that scheduling the Key CA is at all going to prevent someone without a key from installing your software. It would not take much to use Orca or similar tools to remove your CA from the sequence and allow the install to continue. I believe the recommendation is to prompt for a key /activation during first run of the application. If you are hard set on this then I would ensure that your dialog is being invoked only during the InstallUI sequence. From there, you can test your CA outside of Windows Installer by simply having an export setup that invokes a generic MFC dialog. -----Original Message----- From: Natalie Carr [mailto:natalie.c...@measuresoft.com] Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 11:26 AM To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.' Subject: Re: [WiX-users] C++ Custom Action Dialogs Hi Jacob, The dialog I want to display is the key dialog, the user has to enter the correct key for the software. This is all been created as we used it on our installshield wizards but now my job is to change all our installers to WIX. I was thinking of just re using the same dialog as it is all programmed, etc. What would you suggest I do otherwise? Yes it is an MFC dialog..:) Thanks Natalie -----Original Message----- From: Hoover, Jacob [mailto:jacob.hoo...@greenheck.com] Sent: 09 August 2012 17:15 To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] C++ Custom Action Dialogs All I can think to say is "don't do it"! If this dialog is to show an error or to gather more user input, then how would this work in an unattended install? What if the installer is invoking this custom action from an elevated state? If you need a custom UI, then I would highly suggest in investigating burn. With burn your MSI can remain pure and property driven. If I had to guess, the reason you are having issues is because either you are invoking this custom action in a deferred state under the system context (in which case it doesn't have access to your desktop) or you are trying to create a MFC dialog from a dll. I seem to remember having to do some extra work to get a dialog to display from a DLL. Jacob -----Original Message----- From: Natalie Carr [mailto:natalie.c...@measuresoft.com] Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 10:50 AM To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [WiX-users] C++ Custom Action Dialogs Hey, Been trying to create a dialog in C++ Custom Action project so that I can call it in one of my functions which my WIX msi will call. Is this possible as I've been trying to do it and am getting nowhere and now I'm thinking that I could be wasting my time if WIX does not support this. Kind Regards, Natalie Carr ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. 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