Some of the content of old forums was migrated into Connect but the archived stuff is, I believe, lost forever.
Thus it is a good idea to cut and paste any interesting postings into a document that you keep safe and sound on your system. That way you never have to look back in regret.

As for the above issue, you could, for example, script the calls in Wisescript, and use the "hide window" option. Or use SetAcl

Ah, WiseScript - that may have been it actually!

What is SetAcl?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=setacl

OK, back to this post....

I have that WiseScript that runs RegAsm, but I'm having a problem which I don't understand or maybe didn't understand until I started typing this post.  

We write a value to the Registry under the key value HKCU\Software\OurCompany\OurProduct\InstallPath.  In the scripted widget, I grab or attempt to grab this value from the registry then use it to register files.  What is happening is that I found that the Variable that is to hold the value actually holds no value while called from the installation (displayed in message).

Now, when the install finishes, I run the widget and I then have my value.  It occurred to me that the Custom Action is set to run deferred in System Context so I'm guessing that's my problem.  It's not finding the HK_Current_User in this case.

I'm going to switch to User Context but I wonder if this will cause a problem on Vista/Windows 7 where it is recommended to run such actions in system context.  We require that an Admin run the installs so I wonder if Registration via RegAsm will run properly in user context.??

I know there's one way to find out, but any insight, corrections, etc would be appreciated!!

Thanks Much!!!

It appears that if I change the context to user, I am then able to grab the registry value during the install.  However, the files are not being registered as was hoped.

I run the utility outside of the install and I get errors indicating that I need administrative credentials even though I am an administrator on the target machine.  If I right click the widget and select Run As Administrator it appears to complete successfully.

I really don't know how I'm going to get around this.  I guess I could write the path to HKLM, read it from there and return the action to System Context.  ??

Indeed, if you need to run your custom actions in system context, then writing to HKLM would be one solution that is simple to implement, and of course it also preserves the value for any future repair operations, regardless of which account runs the repair.

Thanks EdT.  I'm currently trying that change now.

I am going to further investigate what is not being scanned when adding these files to the install template.

I think I'll use RegAsm /regfile and compare to what is currently in my template.  I would absolutely love to get to the bottom of this file registration stuff.

If I can see differences, I guess I could add that directly into my install template and not rely on any Custom Action to register and uninstall CA to un-register.  The only problem with this is its probably going to be tedious and don't know how often this registration information will change and how often this tedious process would then have to be repeated.