Megh Neupane

The history of UAC, User Account Control, dates back to as early as Windows 95 Operating System. With the ‘intense’ requirement in the corporate world to have employees their own ‘user profile’, Microsoft implemented profiling concept many years earlier however reaching Windows Vista, the concept has taken a major and bold changes. Introduction of Windows Installer Technology and it’s continuing evolution makes UAC as one of the secure form of application installation and management services.

Robert Flaming, product manager at Windows Installer Team, has recently published a series of articles relating and concerning "User Account Control and Windows Installer". His articles discusses some of the very important concepts that are MUST to understand to create applications in Windows Vista. Windows Installer 4.0 is the latest version available and currently only compatible with Windows Vista.

Flaming’s articles (ascending order):

Added October 01, 2006:

• UAC in MSI Notes: Answers to questions in comments from earlier blog posts.
• UAC in MSI Notes: What are the Hurdles in Windows Vista Logo compliance related to UAC and MSI?
• UAC in MSI Notes: How do I get one credential dialog for a multiple package install?
• UAC in MSI Notes: Easier for my current custom installer to support UAC than switch to MSI?
• UAC in MSI Notes: How to Build Packages that work for both Standard User and Per-Machine?
• UAC in MSI Notes: Is "this" intentional? If so, why?
• UAC in MSI Notes: Do I need to consider "this" when I’m designing for UAC in MSI? Generally, no.

Added September 30, 2006:

• UAC in MSI Notes: how do I troubleshoot UAC in MSI via the log?
• UAC in MSI Notes: How do I get the shield on the advertised shortcut?
• MSI in UAC Notes: When General Custom Action Mitigation Fails
• MSI in UAC Notes: Should I write my installer as a Standard User install? If yes, how?
• MSI in UAC Notes: Read the Friendly Manual

Earlier Posts:

• MSI in UAC Notes: O Whitepaper, Where Art Thou?
• UAC in MSI Notes: Challenges for a Beautiful Custom Action
• UAC in MSI Notes: My "Four Square" Diagram
• UAC in MSI Notes: The NoImpersonate Bit Mistake
• UAC in MSI Notes: Modifying System in InstallExecuteSequence outside of Script
• UAC in MSI Notes: Modify System with InstallUISequence Custom Action
• UAC in MSI Notes: The AdminUser Mistake
• UAC in MSI Notes: Credential Prompt and Permissions
• UAC in MSI Notes: The "Saw Tooth" Diagram
• UAC in MSI Notes: A Relief Providing Framework
• UAC in MSI Notes: Jagged Edge to User
• UAC in MSI Notes: Just Like Managed Installs
• UAC in MSI Notes: Conflicting Definitions of Per-User
• UAC in MSI Notes: How I Root Cause The Problem
• UAC in MSI Notes: Introduction

These articles should be helpful and ‘may be’ the key discussions of forth coming Webcasts at MSDN about Designing Application Installations for UAC with Windows Installer 4.0 in Windows Vista scheduled on Wednesday, October 18, 2006 10:00AM Pacific Time. If you have any concerns reading these articles and would like to understand more about UAC features in Vista and ‘know-hows’, you can follow the link and register for the event.

NOTES
Robert Flaming is adding a series of articles in the same list once in a while. They will be updated here once available with update date stamp of this article.
Original Post: September 24, 2006
Edited Post: October 01, 2006

Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for September Customer Technology Preview (CTP) was released on September 28, 2006. The Windows SDK contains documentation, samples, headers, libraries, and tools designed to help you develop Microsoft Windows applications. The documentation, samples, and tools provided in the Windows SDK support application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) versions of Windows. Not all API support all platforms. You can look under the specific API documentation to determine which platform the API supports.

The documentation, samples, and tools provided in this release are preliminary and subject to change. This SDK is designed to use with Windows Vista build 5728 and the .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime September Customer Technology Preview. This release of the Windows SDK is compatible with the RTM versions of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Visual Studio Extensions for .Net Framework 3.0 are available in the related resources.

NOTES:
There are a number of known issues with this release. Please consult the Release Notes associated with this download for more information. Reminder: This version of the Windows SDK will not work with previous pre-release versions of Windows Vista, the .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components for Windows XP or Windows Server, or previous pre-release versions of Visual Studio.

Please note that this download contains SDK content only. To build .NET Framework 3.0 applications for Windows XP or Windows Server, the .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components for September CTP must be downloaded separately.

Microsoft has released the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta. “Visual Studio 2005 shipped in November of 2005 and this Service Pack incorporates fixes that we have addressed since that release”, announced Microsoft today. Following are the type of fixes you will find in this beta service pack:

• The Hotfixes and General Distribution Release Updates released between Visual Studio 2005 Release to Market and the end of the Service Pack customer beta period.
• Any fixes addressing security issues categorized by the Microsoft Security Response Center as “Critical”, “Important” or “Moderate”.
• Fixes for product reliability and stability issues, including those reported by customers via the Product Feedback Center, and the crashes most frequently reported via Watson.
• Fixes for common “eligible” functional issues reported by customers via the Product Feedback Center. “Eligible” functional issues are those that do not require breaking changes, architectural changes, or Design Change Request level feature work and that do not create unacceptable product quality risk and/or cost of implementation.
• Fixes for the top customer and supportability issues as reported by Customer Support Services.

Somasegar’s WebLog mentions VS2005 is triggered to make itself compatible with Windows Vista. Such a support will be announced in the coming months. Presently, VS2005 SP1 will run on Vista but may likely have some compatibility issues. Visual Studio .NET 2002 or Visual Studio .NET 2003 support will be dropped as development environments on Windows Vista however, you can continue to use Visual Studio .NET 2002 or 2003 on Windows XP to develop applications that can run on Windows Vista.

Download VS 2005 SP1 Beta

NOTES

• While installing on Vista, if you get “Error 1718. File was rejected by digital signature policy”, follow KB 925336 for a successful installation.
• Custom Actions under UAC in Vista