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I've noticed that some programs installed on Windows have more than three numbers in their versions. The installer creation software vendor that I use claims in their support forum that Windows Installer only uses three numbers (like major.minor.patch).

My question is, how do these other installers set different formats? Some even have rather wacky date-like values embedded in them.

installer version number example

Indivara
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    The answer you got is good. [Here is a script](https://github.com/glytzhkof/all/blob/master/MsiHtmlReport-Mini-V4.vbs) you can run to get the actual [ProductVersion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/productversion) for all MSI packages that are installed. Just save to the desktop and run the script from there. It will take some time to complete, and please read the comments at the top first. – Stein Åsmul Dec 07 '21 at 17:23
  • @stein-Åsmul Thanks for the script! I've always used `wmic` to get installed products but this is much better. – Indivara Dec 08 '21 at 01:03

1 Answers1

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The DisplayVersion uninstall entry is just a string value and can be set to anything the installer wishes (especially if it is not a MSI based installer). Windows itself does not use this string for anything other than showing it to the user.

MSDN does say that DisplayVersion is "Derived from ProductVersion property" but that of course only applies to MSI installers.

The documentation for ProductVersion claims the syntax is major.minor.build but that same page also says:

Note that Windows Installer uses only the first three fields of the product version. If you include a fourth field in your product version, the installer ignores the fourth field.

Anders
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  • Thank you! So it is possible to set it independently and could be totally unrelated to the actual product... I had assumed that was the actual product version. – Indivara Dec 08 '21 at 01:02