Windows Installer 3.0

[riser]

I was reading through the help file on the windows installer 3.0.. it actually had a few good things in there and a few tips.
The one I found really useful was disabling system checkpoints..

Basically, everytime you install/uninstall a piece of software, it takes longer installing because XP is creating the checkpoints.

You can disable this feature in the registry which does improve your installs.

***
LimitSystemRestoreCheckpointing
This per-machine system policy turns off the creation of checkpoints by Windows Installer.


Set to 0 or absent, the installer does normal checkpointing for install or uninstall. Set to 1, the installer creates no checkpoints.

This policy affects only checkpoints set by Windows Installer. On Windows XP computers, administrators may decide to disable checkpointing from within Windows Installer to improve performance. System Restore also creates additional checkpoints. For more information, see System Restore Points and the Windows Installer and Setting a Restore Point from a Custom Action.

Available with Windows Installer version 2.0 and later versions.


Registry Key

Set the value named LimitSystemRestoreCheckpointing under the following registry key.d


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer



Data Type

REG_DWORD

***

Anyhow, I found this useful since I spend a lot of time each day reinstalling the same software on computers.. especially my repackaging computer. This would really be beneficial to people working in IT departments that need to install tested software with minimal downtime..


You can download the help file which has a lot more good stuff in in from Microsoft.. MSI.CHM is the file, used for SDK stuff.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

Just disable system restore.

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[riser]

Nono.. you're not understanding this..

yeah you can disable system restore which completely takes care of this..

what this does is disables the checkpoints before and after an install...

I still use system restore points.. but I don't need to have it everytime something trusted is installed.

I still want to have the option, just not everytime something is installed. This just makes installs work faster while keeping the system restore ability.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

Yeah, I get ya, just if you ever mess your system up, a sys-restor may leave it working again but you'll likely have errors and files all over the place.



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