As part of an WiX-based installer I have the following component with a User element (besides other components with File, ServiceInstall and ServiceControl elements):
<Component Id="cmpServiceUser" Directory="TARGETDIR" Guid="PUT-GUID-HERE">
<util:User
Id="ServiceUser"
Name="[ProductName]"
Password="[ServiceUserPassword]"
PasswordNeverExpires="yes"
LogonAsService="yes"
CreateUser="yes"
UpdateIfExists="yes"
RemoveOnUninstall="yes"
/>
</Component>
I have decided to go the only-major-upgrades way and placed the following element inside the Product:
<MajorUpgrade
Schedule="afterInstallInitialize"
DowngradeErrorMessage="A newer version of [ProductName] is already installed."
/>
The first installation of the product works as expected. During a major upgrade, I would have expected the user to be first removed (during RemoveExistingProducts) and later being created again. But it behaves different: The user is really removed nearly at the end of the installation - after the service for example has been restarted again (Process Explorer can still tell me the service's user name but not the SID any more - as the service's user was removed after the service was started).
After many hours of dissecting various installation logs I have turned to peek into the sources of the UtilExtension and probably found an explanation in scauser.cpp (slightly reformatted for better SO-readability):
// Schedule the removal because the user exists and we don't have any flags set
// that say, don't remove the user on uninstall.
//
// Note: We can't rollback the removal of a user which is why RemoveUser is a
// commit CustomAction.
So I guess this late removal of the user really belongs to the RemoveExistingProducts action in this case.
Thanks for reading this far - now the question: Is it possible to use util:User@RemoveOnUninstall in collaboration with a major upgrade strategy?
