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I'm trying to do a reverse-engineer of Yumeyao's Visual C++ runtimes true addon for Win7, because the switchlesses always fail unattended and need to be fudged with more cumbersome means post-install. Win7 does away with the ASMS folders on the install source that XP has (which VC++ 2K5, and 2K8 are deployed from in Yumeyao's addon) in favor of distributing the files in a zillion winsxs folders.

Is there any transition layer within Win7 that replaces the ASMS distribution structure and automatically distributes the runtime files to their proper winsxs directories? Parsing the MSI in Orca and painstakingly slotting each and every file into a winsxs folder is such an error-prone way to do it that it's not practical, but I was wondering if Windows had some sort of internal 'shiv' for that which sorted the files much like the system32/syswow64 and Program Files/Program Files (x86) divides are made fully transparent to installers. Even better if Setup has some sort of backward compatibility that lets you integrate the ASMS folder structure in the install source and have Setup automatically recognize and migrate it.

I've found no documentation online saying one way or the other how Win7 treats that old ASMS functionality or what the preferred replacement means is for installers. Anyone familiar enough with the internals of that to offer any insight? Could potentially affect a lot of different addons.

From what I information I have gathered on the winsxs folder is that it was supposed to prevent version conflicts of files. As such, windows 7 keeps *every* copy of a specific dll that it runs into, and links those to the appropriate directories.

The flaw to the winsxs directory is that it could grow very large over time. Since the files are supposed to be hard linked into the directories, the winsxs directory could appear larger than what it really was (multiple copies of the same file which are actually hard linked to each other).

That is what I know. Your mileage may vary with the information provided.

The switchless installer needs administrator-privilege.

The installers in my addons now automatically ask for administrator-privilege.

As Onepiece stated here Winsxs installation can't be launched from svcpack addons because at that time SXS aren't configurated yet.

DXWNT True Integrator always executes everything with Admin privilege. So every multiplatform SW True Addon which works in XP must work in 7 too.