How to determine if Windows Installer is installed?

Question

I figured out how to determine which version of the .NET Framework was installed by reading the previous SO posts, but I didn't find anything about the Windows installer.

Is there a registry key or something similar that I can check if the Windows 3.01+ installer is installed?

Answer 1

"If you want to check the version of Windows Installer on your system, check the version of MSI.DLL in the Windows \ System 32 folder"

http://blogs.msdn.com/windows_installer_team/archive/2005/08/05/448386.aspx

Answer 2

To find out which version of Windows Installer is installed on your PC, follow these steps:

• Click Start
• Then click Run
• Type "msiexec" in the box, then click "OK."
• Then another square will appear, and at the top of the window the first line should read which version of the Windows installer you installed on your computer.
• It should look something like this: "Windows® Installer. V 4.5.6001.22159"

Answer 3

You can simply enable the redistributable version of Windows Installer and not worry about it.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=889482FC-5F56-4A38-B838-DE776FD4138C&displaylang=en

Answer 4

Check the version of the% SYS32% \ msi.dll file. In XP, this is in c: \ windows \ system32.