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Easily installing MSIs with verbose logs

While building and testing the WiX-based installer for our product, I often need to run the install with verbose MSI logging. This also turns out to be handy for figuring why other product's flaky installs won't run on my machine (which is surprisingly common). Here's a registry script I created that adds a couple of new context menu items for .MSI files - "Install with Log" and "Uninstall with Log". Simply copy the following into a text file named with a .REG extension, then double click it in Explorer to merge into your registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\LoggedInstall]
@="Install with &Log"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\LoggedInstall\command]
@="\"msiexec.exe\" /i \"%1\" /l*v \"%1.install.log\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\LoggedUninstall]
@="Uninstall with Lo&g"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\LoggedUninstall\command]
@="\"msiexec.exe\" /x \"%1\" /l*v \"%1.uninstall.log\""



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