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I'm curious what is the best way to detect installed software in computer during wix installation. I know that it's possible to do in a lot of ways. like appsearch, registrysearch, directorysearch and filesearch.

I also know that in windows installer there is MsiGetProductInfo function and ComponentSearch in wix, which look for information based on guid.. and also one other possibility is searching in the registry HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall but there are more possibilities. HKCU, HKLM and 64 or 32bit?

For me the best option looks something like MsiGetProductInfo, where I can put the guid of the app I'm looking for and then I get info like installation dir, version..

I read a couple of articles and lots of people are doing this through registry search. and dir search. but what if a patch changes the structure of app dirs? Or changes the registry keys. The guid should be still unique through these changes.

Also my boss told me that he is against searching the registry. So what do you think about this? What is the best option to do it.

Edit: Additional question. it looks to me that not of all installation system using guid.

Morgan Thrapp
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Dusan Plavak
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    What are you going to do with the information? Are these install-time dependencies, runtime dependencies, or software you want to remove or upgrade with your Windows Installer package? What installer technology are they installed with? Do they have documented checks for installation that you could use, too? (They might have implemented such checks within their own installers.) Is it possible that a package can install various features such that the features you need are not installed but the package is? It would seem that each package is a separate problem so you might ask about one at a time. – Tom Blodget Aug 12 '13 at 14:23
  • Well, we planning to make this check as launch conditions and also we want to install some files to that locations... Some peace of software was installed using wise installation studio... but we want to rewrite it to wix... but still needs to support old installer... and also using some 3rd party software... and installing to it... What I`m asking is just what is best practice... Thanks – Dusan Plavak Aug 12 '13 at 15:02

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