Am 05.12.2011 18:29, schrieb Steve Kersley:
This is probably more of a 'share the frustration' post than anything 
specifically wpkg-related, but very keen to hear if anyone has a workaround?

I have an application (Samsung MagicInfo Premium Authoring tool - the user tools for our digital 
signage system) that needs to be installed in the same folder on each machine as the data files 
that it creates contain hardcoded paths to content files stored in the local install directories.  
If you open these files on a different architecture to the machine that created them, the files 
aren't in the same place ("Program Files" vs "Program Files (x86)") so won't 
open correctly.

Most of our PCs are currently running x86, but a couple of us (myself included, 
and I'm the one who creates the initial content template and then hands off to 
other people to maintain and edit) are running x64 and the intention is that in 
future staff PCs will be replaced/migrated from XP to Windows 7 x64.

I have extracted the MSI from the InstallShield installation source, and it 
does support the INSTALLDIR property via the msiexec command line.  However, 
Windows is being too clever.  It will let me install to c:\foo, but if I tell 
it to install to c:\Program Files\foo, it silently modifies that so that it 
installs to c:\Program Files (x86)\foo instead.

Is there any way to forcibly install a 32-bit app into c:\Program Files on an 
x64 machine?

Is the only option going to be the slightly messy approach to install to a new 
directory in the root of c:?  That will mean having to modify the existing data 
files that have already been authored, but will only have to be done once, 
before we create too many more.

I have also considered creating a symlink or junction within \Program Files to point to 
the subdirectory in \Program Files (x86) - that works in that it would allow a data file 
created on an x86 machine to be opened on an x64 machine but still won't work the other 
way round unless I create an unnecessary "Program Files (x86)" directory tree 
on all of the x86 machines too.

Has anyone dealt with a similar problem?  I think the fault is largely with the 
application, but really it would have made more sense if Windows always used 
the same standard path for existing 32-bit apps which may or may not be aware 
of architecture issues, and created a new path for 64-bit apps which would 
always have been expecting to be 'special' and architecture-aware.  But that's 
a rant for another occasion.


As I see it the "Program Files" folder contains the native applications, which means 32-bit for x86 and 64-bit for AMD64.

If you need a consistent path and since it seems the application is saving data files to the installation folder, you should install into the root folder like "C:\MyApp". This would allow the application to work properly and you to use default settings files.


--
Stefan P.

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