I have two drivers, one a minifilter and another an upper disk filter. The INF for the minifilter is just the stock one you get when you create a new project. The INF for the upper filter is based on diskperf. When I build and run my MSI to install these, the minifilter installs fine but the upper filter does not. However, there are no errors produced and all of the logs (both the MSI log as well as setupapi.dev.log) say that it was successful. During the upper filter installation part, I even get the popup that says do you want to trust this publisher (I’d like to get rid of that popup as well if possible). I’ve even monitored the installation process with procmon and there are no errors returned that would indicate something went wrong at the file system or registry level.
I can right click the upper filter INF to install and it installs fine. Doing it that way as well does not produce any publisher confirmation popup either (my drivers are EV signed). The right click method as well as the minifilter are being installed by InfDefaultInstall.exe while it looks like the MSI is running drvinst.exe to install the upper filter. I’m assuming that the MSI is basing the decision of which to use on the INF. Is there a way to change the upper filter INF so that it gets installed by InfDefaultInstall? Or does the upper filter INF have to have something special to be installed by drvinst? Like I said, it’s based on the diskperf example so I would assume it has all the necessary fields.
Wix is, in my opinion, a complicated poorly documented mess wrapped around
a complicated poorly documented mess. Unfortunately enterprise customers
demand msi based installers, MSFT has more or less abandoned win32 install,
installshield is expensive and wix is free. So you go with wix and you are
stuck with its endless peculiarities.
Mark Roddy
On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 4:35 PM, wrote:
> Thanks for the suggestion but no dice. > > I dropped Wix and just rolled my own installer solution. I figured it was > easier and more productive than trying to understand why it wasn’t working. > > — > NTDEV is sponsored by OSR > > Visit the list online at: http:> showlists.cfm?list=ntdev> > > MONTHLY seminars on crash dump analysis, WDF, Windows internals and > software drivers! > Details at http: > > To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at < > http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer> ></http:></http:>
Wix is, in my opinion, a complicated poorly documented mess wrapped
around a complicated poorly documented mess. Unfortunately enterprise
customers demand msi based installers, MSFT has more or less abandoned
win32 install, installshield is expensive and wix is free. So you go
with wix and you are stuck with its endless peculiarities.
I have to agree with this. There certainly must be complicated
installation scenarios where something like WiX is required, but 99% of
the installers in the world are installing one thing of one type, and a
scripted solution (like NSIS) is much more sensible.
–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
I must admit that I have never used WIX to install a driver, but for software products it is actually quite straightforward to use.
The biggest issue is getting over the feature / component distinction that is inherited from MSI. This actually works quite well for a software product with optional features that not every user would wish to install, but the biggest drag is the necessity of short file names (again an MSI limitation)
These features become increasingly useful the larger the install becomes, but even for simple projects the build tools for WIX are so much better than standard MSI / MSP creation that I find it worth it. Besides, once you manage the first project, new ones are mostly cut, paste and replace the GUIDs
From: Tim Robertsmailto:xxxxx Sent: April 5, 2017 12:47 PM To: Windows System Software Devs Interest Listmailto:xxxxx Subject: Re: [ntdev] UpperFilter installation with Wix
Mark Roddy wrote: > > Wix is, in my opinion, a complicated poorly documented mess wrapped > around a complicated poorly documented mess. Unfortunately enterprise > customers demand msi based installers, MSFT has more or less abandoned > win32 install, installshield is expensive and wix is free. So you go > with wix and you are stuck with its endless peculiarities.
I have to agree with this. There certainly must be complicated installation scenarios where something like WiX is required, but 99% of the installers in the world are installing one thing of one type, and a scripted solution (like NSIS) is much more sensible.
– Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.