Running program detection - Windows Installer vs the OS

Hi all,

I have a question regarding the 'detect running programs' capabilities of Windows Installer. When
Vista came along the ability for an installer to detect what running programs were holding files
open was improved. My question is, how much of this is down to Vista and how much is down to
Windows Installer? We've been using the Windows Installer 4.5 redistributable, but XP is still not
asking the user to close the running programs that Vista is. In this case it's a COM component that
Visual Studio has loaded. My installer detects that it is running and requests a reboot, but this
results in different behaviour between XP and Vista. Is it just a difference in behaviour between
the operating systems, or should Windows Innstaller 4.5 be taking care of this?

Thanks,
Rob

"Rob Hamflett" <rob@snsys.com> wrote in message
news:ukY2ULc9KHA.508@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Hi all,
> I have a question regarding the 'detect running programs' capabilities
> of Windows Installer. When Vista came along the ability for an
> installer to detect what running programs were holding files open was
> improved. My question is, how much of this is down to Vista and how much
> is down to Windows Installer? We've been using the Windows Installer
> 4.5 redistributable, but XP is still not asking the user to close the
> running programs that Vista is. In this case it's a COM component that
> Visual Studio has loaded. My installer detects that it is running and
> requests a reboot, but this results in different behaviour between XP
> and Vista. Is it just a difference in behaviour between the operating
> systems, or should Windows Innstaller 4.5 be taking care of this?
> Thanks,
> Rob
Hi Rob,

Vista has RestartManager support which Windows Installer 4.5 makes use of.
That is the reason the file in use detection works differently (and more
effectlively) on Vista than on XP.

Windows Installer does not have any additional improved support for file in
use detection on older platforms.

Sincerely,
Adrian Accinelli

On 18/05/2010 17:37, Adrian Accinelli wrote:
> Hi Rob,
>
> Vista has RestartManager support which Windows Installer 4.5 makes use of.
> That is the reason the file in use detection works differently (and more
> effectlively) on Vista than on XP.
>
> Windows Installer does not have any additional improved support for file in
> use detection on older platforms.

Excellent, thanks. This is what I suspected, but I didn't want to report this claim to our test
team without doing some digging first.

Rob

"Rob Hamflett" <rob@snsys.com> wrote in message
news:ukY2ULc9KHA.508@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Hi all,
>
> I have a question regarding the 'detect running programs' capabilities of
> Windows Installer. When Vista came along the ability for an installer to
> detect what running programs were holding files open was improved. My
> question is, how much of this is down to Vista and how much is down to
> Windows Installer? We've been using the Windows Installer 4.5
> redistributable, but XP is still not asking the user to close the running
> programs that Vista is. In this case it's a COM component that Visual
> Studio has loaded. My installer detects that it is running and requests a
> reboot, but this results in different behaviour between XP and Vista. Is
> it just a difference in behaviour between the operating systems, or should
> Windows Innstaller 4.5 be taking care of this?
>
> Thanks,
> Rob


You're welcome!