Running installer does nothing on Windows Vista by default

[peterflynn]

1. Download an Edge Code build (or Brackets, presumably) on a Windows Vista machine
2. Run the installer

Result: nothing happens

Expected: installer UI appears

Workarounds:

• Right-click > Properties > Unblock. Then run it again.
• Move the MSI file to a non-NTFS drive, then run it. (The "downloaded from Internet" tainting metadata is NTFS-only).

I tested on Vista Enterprise edition with default UAC settings, using IE 8. It's possible that other similar setups (e.g. Vista Home or download using Chrome) would not reproduce this.

This was reported by an Edge Code user in the wild here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4893231#4893231

This appears to be a problem that afflicts other MSI-based installers. For example:

• http://mdn.morovia.com/kb/install-msi-File-requires-System-Admin-Privileges-Windows-Vista-10602.html
• Edge Inspect has the same problem: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1093268#4848316 (although their installer codebase is almost identical to ours, so that might not prove much)

But given the sparsity of Google hits, it seems unlikely that all MSIs are afflicted by this. It does appear that some installers are able to detect this situation and show UI, but it's not clear if they're MSIs:

• http://kb.winzip.com/kb/entry/241/
• http://flippingbook.com/help/publisher-2/faq/installation-on-windows-vista-is-interrupted/

[peterflynn]

It seems like a massive Vista UI design fail that attempting to launch OS-"blocked" files silently no-ops with no user-visible error message whatsoever. But that appears to be what's happening: if I watch Task Manager, there's not even a flicker of any process being launched when I try to run the installer. The OS simply refuses to do anything, and doesn't deign to tell the user about it.

It's sort of shocking that the OS doesn't even care that the file has a valid digital signature (in the case of Edge Code / Inspect).

[peterflynn]

One problem might be that I think our MSI is configured to only support running as admin (i.e. installing for all users). This simplifies building the MSI but might contribute to this problem (if so, ironically that implies Vista is taking a similarly lazy development approach: refusing to launch the admin-only MSI instead of automatically showing a UAC escalation prompt).

[njx]

Nominating for sprint 18.

[peterflynn]

Reviewed. We will add this to release notes and the troubleshooting page, then close it or lower the priority (given the relatively small number of users on Vista).

[adrocknaphobia]

Let's lower the priority to "low" and let Carey Burgess track this in the forums to see how prevalent the issue is.

[adrocknaphobia]

Tagging Carey's github ID. @AllDayDev

[peterflynn]

Added to release notes and troubleshooting page, so I'm lowering the priority and moving out of sprint 18.

[marcelgerber]

Seems to be fixed (tested on Vista with installer of sprint 31).

[peterflynn]

@SAplayer It may depend on your security settings and what type of user you're logged on as. Nothing has changed in our installer code that I would expect to fix this...

[marcelgerber]

@peterflynn We should maybe test this again with Sprint 37, the signed installer could have fixed this.

[peterflynn]

@SAplayer I don't think it would -- Edge Code has always been signed and it was seeing the same issue.

[rajeevkishore]

I am still having the problem while installing Zoom on Win. Vista + SP1 + SP2.

Now the installation process starts well, but gives an error and does not install.

While checking on Zoom's system requirements, it asks for Vista + SP1 or higher. So, Zoom should install in mt Vista + SP2.

Please help.

Regards

Rajeev
Whatsapp: +91 98100 73055