How do I customize my WinZip MSI?

by rollingcaker On April 6, 2009 | Utilities | Hits: 137

Software you need: Winzip

Customizing the WinZip MSI file

Open the WinZip MSI file using your MSI editor of choice. Then edit the Property table.

Editing INSTALLCMD

The INSTALLCMD property allows or suppresses certain WinZip functionality. Switches can be added to this property. Each switch should be preceded by the forward slash (/) and should have a space after it. The switches are:

noqp - prevent WinZip from including the WinZip Quick Pick icon in the taskbar tray

noc4u - prevent the "Check for Update" function from running

notip - prevent the "Tip of the Day" from displaying

nopredefinedjobs - prevent the pre-configured WinZip jobs from being installed

nojobrunprompt - prevent the prompt dialog from appearing when running WinZip jobs (be sure to consider the security implications of allowing your users to automatically run WinZip Job files before installing with this parameter)

altext "XXX" - this will associate the file extension you specified with WinZip. Therefore, double clicking a file with that extension will open the file in WinZip (This switch is not available with WinZip 10.0)

For example, if you want to customize your installation to have no WinZip Quick Pick icon and no pre-configured WinZip Job files installed, the INSTALLCMD property should read:

/noqp /nopredefinedjobs /autoinstall

The INSTALLDIR Property

The INSTALLDIR property allows you to set the installation folder for WinZip. It can be added to the list of properties in the Property table. Adding this property allows you to customize the folder to which WinZip is installed. Insert the INSTALLDIR property and then enter the destination path.

Other WinZip Properties

There are other properties of the WinZip MSI that can be edited, they are:

ADDDESKTOPICON - Add the WinZip Desktop icon to the user's desktop

ADDMENUGROUP - Add a WinZip Menu Group item to Start -> All Programs for each user

ADDSTARTMENU - Add WinZip to the top of each user's Start Menu

The MSI, as shipped, sets each of the above properties to a value of "1" (enable). Each property can be set to "0" (disable) to prevent the addition of certain functions. To set the value for a particular property to "0", click the value for the property you wish to change, delete the "1" and enter a "0".

Password Policy Properties

Note: These properties only affect WinZip Pro (12.0 and later)

WinZip 12.0 (and later), when installed with a Pro license, includes the options enabling the administrator to set policies that will disallow encrypting files with a password that does not meet the strength requirements defined by the policy. Restricting users from making changes to these policies and/or disabling encryptions methods is also available. The WinZip MSI properties for configuring password policies are:

PASSWORDLENGTH - Specify the minumum length of a password

PASSWORDREQLOWER - Require passwords to contain at least one lower case character, a through z

PASSWORDREQUPPER - Require passwords to contain at least one upper case character, A through Z

PASSWORDREQNUMBER - Require passwords to contain at least one numeric character

PASSWORDREQSYMBOL - Require passwords to contain at least one symbol character

PASSWORDRESTRICT - Prevent users from changing password policies

ENCRYPTDISABLEMETHODS - Disable one of more encryption method

The allowed values for PASSWORDREQLOWER, PASSWORDREQUPPER, PASSWORDREQNUMBER, PASSWORDREQSYMBOL, and PASSWORDRESTRICT are: TRUE, FALSE, and DEFAULT. The WinZip DEFAULT is currently the same as FALSE for each of these. Setting the value to TRUE enables the requirement.

Any number from 1 to 99 can be used as the value for PASSWORDLENGTH. WinZip uses a default value of "8".

The allowed values for ENCRYPTDISABLEMETHODS are ZIP20, AES128, AES256, and DEFAULT. You can enter one, two, or all three encryption methods. The WinZip DEFAULT is for none of the methods to be disabled. DEFAULT cannot be used with any of the other values.

Disabling one or two methods will make the specified method(s) unavailable. If all three methods are disabled and a user attempts to encrypt, WinZip will display a caution message explaining that the encryption feature has been disabled by the administrator. For example, if you want your users to only use 256-bit AES encryption ENCRYPTDISABLEMETHODS should read ZIP20,AES128 (the values are delimited with a comma and no space).

Working with the Evaluation Version MSI

If you did not order a customized backup CD, but have downloaded the evaluation version MSI file (winzip120.msi) you should be aware of two other WinZip MSI properties, which are:

ADD_WZMUL - Add the WinZip license file (WinZip.wzmul) contained in the MSI file to the Common AppData folder

SHOW_WEBPAGE - After uninstalling WinZip, open the internet browser to a "Why Did you Uninstall" web page

For each of these properties a value of "1" equals "enable" and a value of "0" equals disable

The custom MSI file provided on a backup CD will contain the customer's license file (WinZip.wzmul) and the ADD_WZMUL property will be set to "1" to cause this license to be installed while WinZip is installing. The default value in the evaluation version MSI file for this property is "0" insuring that the "dummy" license file it contains as a placeholder will not be installed. If you have a good application for creating and editing MSI files you may be able to remove this bogus file and replace it with your actual license file. If you do, you should also set ADD_WZMUL to "1" or your license file will not be installed with WinZip.

The default setting for SHOW_WEBPAGE in the WinZip evaluation version MSI is "1". In order to prevent each user's internet browser from displaying the "Why Did you Uninstall" web page after WinZip is uninstalled, you will want to change this to "0" (this is the default setting for a custom MSI file).

Installing WinZip with limited user involvement

If WinZip is installed manually (full user involvement) any editing you have done to the INSTALLCMD property will be ignored. The user will be offered default options which can be configured in the Installation Wizard. Any custom changes you have made to other properties, such as ADDDESKTOPICON will not be ignored when you manually install.

To insure that all of your custom settings are used, you should install with limited user involvement. Installing WinZip by Group Policy is silent and will use all of your custom settings. Windows Installer switches executed from a command line or script can also limit user involvement. Typically, these switches would be used with msiexec.exe. Three common switches are /qr (reduced), /qb (basic), and /qn (none or silent). For example, if you would like WinZip to install silently your command line could be:

msiexec /i \\server\share\winzip120.msi /qn

Additional Considerations

Installing WinZip by the usual EXE file, sets up WinZip as a machine level application rather than a user level application. As a result, once WinZip is installed and registered for one user of a computer, WinZip is available and registered to all users of that computer (please keep this in mind when purchasing licenses).

The MSI installation of WinZip also functions as a machine level installation. Consequently, performing a "user configuration" installation by Group Policy (GPO) is not supported.

Therefore, if you will be installing by Group Policy:

you should NOT use a "User Configuration" group policy

you SHOULD use a "Computer Configuration" group policy

You may also want to avoid using the administrative install option (MSIEXEC /a) with this MSI file. Although WinZip will install from the resulting program files and MSI file generated from an administrative install, the path to WinZip will be determined by the target folder specified at the time of the administrative install. In other words, if you specify that this administrative install should place the WinZip files in a shared network folder named "Software", the resulting group policy installation of WinZip will be placed on the users' computers with a path of "C:\Software\Program Files\WinZip".

Tags: customize WinZip MSI, Customize Install winzip

About this article: "How do I customize my WinZip MSI?", under Utilities software Winzip, is published by rollingcaker; If you have any question on this article, please contact the author directly.

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