MORE INFORMATION
Warning Editing an MSI file can
cause serious problems that may leave your system in an unstable state.
Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of
the MSI file editor can be solved. Modifications of the MSI file of a shipping
product should only be attempted under direct instruction from the product's
vendor.
Installing and Running Orca
To install and run the Orca editor, follow these steps:
- Download the Windows Installer SDK samples, tools, and
documentation from the following Web page:
- Install the Orca editor by double-clicking the Orca.msi
file in the \Microsoft SDK\bin folder.
- Click Start, point to Programs, and then click Orca.
- On the File menu, click Open, and then browse to the .msi file that you want to
edit.
Tables
The tables in the .msi file are listed in the left pane. Select
the table to edit. The fields of the table appear at the top of the right pane.
You can expand and collapse these fields.
To add standard tables that
do not appear, click
Add Table on the
Tables menu. To remove a table, click
Drop Table on the
Tables menu, . You must select a table for the
Drop Table option to appear on the menu.
The
Export Tables and
Import Tables options are located on the
Tables menu. The
Export Tables option exports a table to a text format that can be edited with a
text editor, such as Notepad. The exported table has a .idt extension. You can
import these IDT tables into the Orca editor by using the
Import Tables action.
Rows
To add a row to a table, click
Add Row on the
Tables menu. A dialog box appears with the fields of the selected table.
Fields with a gold key beside them are the primary keys for that table. The
field name is indicated above the edit box, followed by the field type. If the
word "Required" follows the field type, this field is required and the row
cannot be added until a value appears in this field.
To remove a
row, select the row of the table, and then click
Drop Row on the
Tables menu.
To edit an existing field in a row, double-click
inside the field that you want to edit.
Validation
Validation runs from within the Orca editor when you click
Validate from the
Tools menu. If you are using the Orca editor that is included in the
latest Windows Installer SDK, there is a drop-down list of the available
evaluation files that you can run.
To validate a file, follow these
steps:
- Select an available evaluation file suite from the
drop-down menu in the Orca editor of the latest Windows Installer SDK.
- Select Full MSI Validation Suite to validate a MSI file with all of the available
validators.
- Select Windows 2000 Logo Program Suite to run a subset of the validators that are used for logo
certification.
- Select Merge Module Validation Suite to validate an MSM file.
- Click to clear Show "INFO" messages to avoid informational messages which do not indicate a
problem with the database.
- Click Go.
After validation is complete, you can copy the results to a
text editor for viewing.
Dialog Boxes
If the open .msi file in the Orca editor contains dialog boxes
for the user interface, preview these dialog boxes by using the
Dialog Preview option on the
Tools menu. You must use the appropriate tables for editing the dialog
boxes.
Summary Information
To edit the summary information, click
Summary Information on the
View menu.
Note The
ProductID field is the package code for the .msi file, not the product
code. The product code is stored in the
Property table in the ProductCode property. If you save the .msi file in
the Orca editor, the package code is not automatically changed. You must make
this change manually.
REFERENCES
All information about the specific tables or fields in a
.msi file is located in the Windows Installer Help file (Msi.chm). The help
file is installed in the
MsiIntel.SDK\Help directory when the Windows Installer SDK is installed. The
standard tables information is at the following location in the help file:
Installer Database\Installer Database Reference\Database Tables.
To install and Run the SDK Update ActiveX Control: