Installing VSIP on Windows Vista/7

Question

Hi,

I have a question regarding installation of VS Integration Packages for VS 2005, VS 2008, and VS 2010.

I have created a VSIP for VS 2005 and 2008 and have an installer that registers these items under the LocalMachine key. It works fine on XP.

I am hoping to port my package to VS 2010 soon, and support Vista and Win7.

I am wondering how would I handle installation on Vista and Win 7 if I am not using an admin account?

Doesn't the user acct prevent installing/registering items under Local Machine?

 

Thanks,

Jason

 

Answer 1

Hello,

The installation of any software (package, add-in or whatever) that requires to write to the C:\Program Files folder or to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE requires admin rights and all tools to generate setups have a flag to require this. When the setup is run, Windows Vista/7 will prompt for elevation for admin users (that are running as a standard users by default) and for standard users (not admin).

FWIW, although for add-ins, some of this article applies to any software:

HOWTO: Design a Visual Studio add-in to install and run on Windows Vista

http://www.mztools.com/resources_vsnet_addins.aspx

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MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio: http://www.mztools.com. My blog about developing add-ins: http://msmvps.com/blogs/carlosq/

Answer 2

So just to be 100% clear,

as long as my installer has that "setup flag" it can be installed under non-admin accounts, but the user will get prompted asking for elevation of privileges?

 

Thanks,

Jason